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Pan-India reservation rule applies to Delhi: Supreme Court
Why it is in news?
- Reservation is State-specific, but Delhi is a ‘miniature India’ where the “pan-India reservation rule” applies.
- A five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously held that “a person belonging to a Scheduled Caste in one State cannot be deemed to be a Scheduled Caste person in relation to any other State to which he migrates for the purpose of employment or education.”
- The benefits of reservation provided for by the Constitution would stand confined to the geographical territories of a State/Union Territory in respect of which the lists of Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes have been notified by the Presidential Orders issued from time to time.
Dissenting opinion
- Justice Banumathi, in a separate opinion, dissented with the majority opinion on the point that the pan-India reservation rule for Delhi was “fully in accord with the constitutional structure of a federal polity.”
- Justice Banumathi said the very object of the constitutional scheme of upliftment of the SCs/STs of these Union Territories would be defeated if pan-India reservation is allowed in Union Territories like Delhi.
- The Constitution Bench was answering a reference made to it in Bir Singh versus Delhi Jal Board, a 2013 case, on the legal question whether a Scheduled Caste person from a State would be accorded the same concessions in employment in another State.
Source
The Hindu