Roughly 19 Cr To Benefit From 10% Reservation For Poor Within Upper Castes; But Legal Hurdles Galore

New Delhi: An estimated 19 crore people could stand to benefit from the Centre’s decision to provide 10 per cent reservations to the poor from the upper castes including Christians and Muslims.

1. The estimate has been arrived at based on a lengthy calculation by Hindustan Times taking income tax return filed also into consideration. The figure is also based on the total upper caste population which stands at around 35 crore in the country.

2. But the implementation is fraught with legal hurdles, subject to Parliament giving nod to the constitution amendment Bill to make the reservation possible.

3. Reservation under the Constitution is only given on the basis of social and educational backwardness, not economic backwardness. Supreme Court has already put a 50 per cent cap on reservation.

4. This move of the government does not correspond to any thing legal, constitutional expert and senior advocate Rajeev Dhawan told HT.

5. It will have to pass the legal hurdle and that of the Indira Sawhney judgment of the Supreme Court which has categorically rejected economic criteria for giving reservations.

6. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in Lok Sabha on Tuesday during a discussion on the amendment bill that SC’s 50 per cent cap only applies to caste based reservation.

7. The SC has already held 50% as the limit to reservation. You can’t amend the constitution beyond the basic structure and equality is part of the basic structure. Creating a fresh reservation in open field, you are violating these limitation on exercise of constitutional power, senior advocate Sanjay Hegde said.

8. In the past, reservation has been approved only when given for social and educational backwardness and none of them included economic criteria, said senior advocate Jaideep Gupta.

9. SC and several high courts have already used the 1993 Indira Sawhney judgment to strike down reservations that breached the 50% limit, such as in the Maratha and Patidar quota cases.

10. Lok Sabha is debating the Constitution amendment Bill this evening and Rajya Sabha is expected to take up tomorrow if it gets the nod of the former.