Aishwarya Rathore-
Published On: October 07, 2021 at 14:21 IST
The Central Government provided Data from 19 Ministries to the Supreme Court in Petitions relating to Reservation in Promotions of Backward Classes.
A Bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao, Sanjiv Khanna, and B.R. Gavai hearing the matter after a 5-judge Bench answered the reference in 2018 in the case of Jarnail Singh v. Lachhmi Narain Gupta.
Additional Solicitor General(ASG) Balbir Singh said, “The Data was only collected from 19 Ministries in which Scheduled Castes(SC) comprise 15.34%, Scheduled Tribes(ST) 6.18%, and Other Backward Classes(OBC) 17.5% of a staff of 1,23,155.”
Singh further assured, “More comprehensive statistics on the representation of SC and ST will be present in the coming days.”
However, Singh clarified that there could be some anomalies in the Data, as SC and ST Employees who obtained Jobs on the General List were also included.
Further, the adequacy of the representation varies by class of employment, with a higher percentage in Class 3 and Class 4, but a very low percentage in Class 1.
The ASG also emphasised that the Court should not interfere in the Reservation Policy if there is no arbitrariness.
Noting the low representation in Class 1 jobs, the ASG stated, “It is really unfortunate that we have not been able to bring SC and ST to the same level of merit in the last 75 years, adding that representation is low since there are no reservations in promotion in that category.”
On October 5, the Supreme Court directed the Centre to submit statistics and data demonstrating that the decision to continue with Reservation in Promotion was based on quantifiable data on the adequacy of representation.
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