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Jarnail Singh & Others v. Lachhmi Narain Gupta & Others

Special Leave Petition (Civil) · 2018 INSC 881Decided 26 Sept 2018
Special Leave Petition (Civil) No. 30621 of 2011
Chief Justice Dipak Misra · Justice Kurian Joseph · Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman · Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul · Justice Indu Malhotra

Background

A batch of petitions (led by Jarnail Singh) questioned whether the Supreme Court's five-judge decision in M. Nagaraj vs Union of India (2006), which had upheld the constitutional validity of Article 16(4-A) (reservation in promotion for SC/STs) subject to the State first collecting "quantifiable data" showing backwardness of SC/STs, needed to be revisited by a larger seven-judge bench, particularly because requiring proof of "backwardness" for SC/STs was argued to be inconsistent with the nine-judge bench ruling in Indra Sawhney. The Attorney General and other counsel also argued over whether the "creamy layer" exclusion principle, used to exclude the relatively advanced members of backward classes from reservation benefits, could and should apply to SC/ST reservation in promotions as well.

Decision Breakdown

The Constitution Bench held that Nagaraj did not need to be referred to a seven-judge bench, since its core reasoning remained sound, but clarified and partly corrected it: Nagaraj's requirement that the State must collect "quantifiable data" demonstrating the backwardness of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes before providing reservation in promotion was held to be invalid to that extent, because the Constitution itself (and the nine-judge Indra Sawhney ruling) already treats SCs and STs as the most backward classes without need for fresh proof of backwardness. The Court also held that the "creamy layer" principle, already applied to other backward classes, is equally applicable to exclude the most advanced members of SC/ST communities from reservation in promotion, reasoning that creamy-layer exclusion flows from the equality principles in Articles 14 and 16 and ensures reservation benefits reach the genuinely disadvantaged.

Lesson Learnt

The Supreme Court can correct or narrow one part of an earlier precedent without overturning the whole judgment or needing a larger bench; and for SC/ST reservation in government-job promotions, the State need not separately prove SC/ST "backwardness" each time, but it must still exclude the relatively well-off ("creamy layer") members of those communities from reservation benefits.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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