States can exceed 50% quota cap: SC

In a major judgment, the Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed states to exceed the 50 per cent limit for reservation it had imposed provided they had solid scientific data to justify the increase.

Through this, the apex court has virtually given up its 17-year-old stance on the 50 per cent cap on reservation. It was in the Mandal Commission case judgment of 1993 that the SC fixed 50 per cent as the limit for quota in government jobs and education institutions. On Tuesday, the apex court revised this view of the reservation policy in two separate orders on laws passed by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in 1993 and 1994 fixing the quota limit at 69 and 73 per cent respectively. While disposing of petitions against the laws of the two states, a bench comprising Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar said these states could “revisit” their enactments to exceed the reservation beyond 50 per cent limit subject to the condition that they had “quantified” data to support the increase. While TN had protected its enactment from judicial review by placing it in Constitution’s Ninth Schedule the Karnataka law was stayed by the apex court in 1994 itself in absence of such protection. The SC also gave one year to the governments of the two states to collect data to justify the increase in the reservation limit. This would mean that the Karnataka would continue with 50 per cent quota and Tamil Nadu with 69 per cent for the time being.

Relaxing its stance, the SC said several changes had taken place after the enactments, including amendments made in Articles 15 and 16, which deal with the reservation, and passage of two major verdicts by it in Nagraj and Ashok Thakur cases.