SC to take up plea for post-based reservation in K'taka

The Supreme Court will, on Monday, take up a plea by a group of general category employees for a direction to the Karnataka government for applying post-based reservation and the principle of creamy layer at entry level in public employment as per the judgement in the B K Pavitra case.

A special bench of Justices U U Lalit and D Y Chandrachud is scheduled to consider the matter arising out of a miscellaneous application filed by advocate Kumar Parimal.

The same bench had passed the Pavitra II judgement on May 10. Earlier, it had deferred the hearing of the review petition against the judgement, after the filing of the application.

The petitioners led by Pavitra had filed the application, days after seeking review
of the May 10 judgement, which had upheld the validity of the Karnataka’s law for granting reservation in promotion to the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe employees.

The court had then dismissed a batch of petitions filed by Pavitra and others that the fresh law of 2018 was passed to “circumvent” the 2017 verdict, delivered on petitions by Pavitra and others.

They sought a restraint order against the state government on its circulars issued on May 15 and June 24 for implementing the law on reservation in promotion for SC/ST employees.

Their application said that a direction was needed that all promotions be re-worked on ‘post’ basis, before any further action can take place. They sought a direction to the state government to apply ‘post’-based reservation in terms of the judgement in ‘R K Sabharwal Vs State of Punjab’ (1995).

The applicants also sought a direction to the state government to apply ‘creamy layer’ and to exclude individuals belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes who no longer required reservation under 16 (4-A) of the Constitution. They said a further direction must be issued to the state to apply creamy layer at entry level to disqualify those who were creamy layer at that stage and conduct the exercise from June 17, 1995, the date of 77th Amendment.

They also urged the court to restrain the state from taking any action where no exercise was undertaken for that service or cadre on adequacy of representation in terms of the M Nagaraj judgement.