Quota in promotion: SC to pronounce judgement on Friday

The Supreme Court would on Friday pronounce its judgement on granting reservation in promotion for SC/ST employees.

A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao, Sanjiv Khanna and B R Gavai would deliver the verdict at 10.30 am on January 28 in the case titled as 'Jarnail Singh Vs Lachhmi Narain Gupta and others'.

During the hearing, the court had sought to know from the Centre what exercise it undertook to ascertain adequacy of representation as per the mandate by the Constitution bench decision in Nagaraj case in 2006 for granting reservations in promotion for SC/ST employees.

The court had said it would decide the contentious issue whether the reservation should be on the basis of proportion or adequacy of representation as enjoined in the Nagaraj case.

Attorney General K K Venugopal, for his part, had said even after 75 years of independence, members of SC/ST community could not be brought at par with the general category employees.

Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan and advocate Kumar Parimal, appearing for one of the parties, contended that the reservation in promotion can't continue indefinitely after adequacy of representation was achieved.

The top court had also made it clear the issues relating to reservation in promotion has already been decided in Nagraj and Jarnail Singh (2018) cases and required no reconsideration.

Those opposing the Centre's plea also submitted that States haven't undertaken the exercise as mandated in the Nagaraj case like collections of quantifiable data, adequacy of representation and overall impact on efficiency of administration for granting reservations.

Venugopal, in his submissions, said the number of posts in the cadre should be in proportion to the percentage of population.

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