Caste not the sole criterion for determining backwardness: SC

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday said the government must devise new methods and yardsticks to determine backwardness of a community for conferring reservation and not grant OBC status solely on the basis of caste.
It said reservation given to communities based on historical injustice and prejudice alone would result in diluting the social welfare protection through reservation given to most deserving backward class citizens.It said a government could not blind itself to other forms of backwardness suffered by other communities.
“Owing to historical conditions, particularly in Hindu society, recognition of backwardness has been associated with caste. Though caste may be a prominent and distinguishing factor for easy determination of backwardness of a social group, this court has been routinely discouraging identification of a group as backward solely on the basis of caste,” a bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Rohinton F Nariman said.
READ ALSO: SC quashes Centre's decision to include Jats in OBC quota
“Social groups who would be most deserving must necessarily be a matter of continuous evolution. New practices, methods and yardsticks have to be continuously evolved moving away from caste-centric definition of backwardness. This alone can enable recognition of newly emerging groups in society which would require palliative action,” Justice Gogoi, who wrote the judgment for the bench, said.
The court also asked why the number of communities in the OBC list was increasing and why there were no exclusions from it despite perceptible all round development of the nation.
READ ALSO: Jat leaders in state demand review of SC judgment on quota
“The percentage of OBC population estimated at ‘not less than 52%’ (in Indra Sawhney judgment popularly known as Mandal verdict) certainly must have gone up considerably as, over the last two decades, there has been only inclusions in the central as well as state OBC lists but hardly any exclusion. This is certainly not what has been envisaged in our constitutional scheme,” the bench said.
The court said the government must exercise high degree of vigilance to discover emerging forms of backwardness and referred to its recent verdict recognizing the ‘third gender’ community as socially and educationally backward class entitled to reservation.
“It is the identification of these new emerging groups that must engage the attention of the state and the constitutional power and duty must be concentrated to discover such groups rather than to enable groups of citizens to recover lost ground in claiming preference and benefits on the basis of historical prejudice,” it said.
It said the perception of a class of people could not be allowed to be a constitutionally permissible yardstick for determination of backwardness.
“Neither can any longer backwardness be a matter of determination on the basis of mathematical formulae evolved by taking into account social, economic and educational indicators. Determination of backwardness must also cease to be relative, possible wrong inclusions cannot be the basis for further inclusions but the gates would be opened only to permit entry of the most distressed. Any other inclusion would be a serious abdication of the constitutional duty of the state,” it said.