Bihar to collect data on staff from reserved categories, SC told

The Bihar government has asked the Supreme Court to dispose of its plea related to reservation in promotion for SC/ST employees, saying it wished to undertake an exercise of collecting quantifiable data for the purpose as mandated by the top court in a judgement on January 28, this year.

The Supreme Court's three-judge bench had then held that the state is obligated to collect quantifiable data on inadequacy of representation before providing for reservation in promotion for SC/ST employees. The court had declined to dilute the criteria laid down in Constitution bench decision of M Nagaraj (2006) and Jarnail Singh (2018) for granting quota benefits in promotion of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes employees.

The top court had then also clarified that the unit for collection of data is a 'cadre' not groups as held in the B K Pavitra II judgement. It had also declared the method for collection of data on the basis of groups as held in Pavitra II contrary to the law laid down in Nagaraj and Jarnail Singh judgements.

In its plea, the Nitish Kumar government said, "the State of Bihar has started the process of undertaking fresh exercise of collecting quantifiable data for the purpose of providing reservation in promotion to reserved categories in accordance with the judgement of January 28."

Therefore, it does not wish to pursue the civil appeal at this stage arising out of a judgement of the Patna High Court of July 30, 2015 which had quashed a resolution and consequential orders passed on August 21, 2012 related to the matter, it added.

The state government sought liberty to undertake the fresh exercise of collecting quantifiable data for providing reservation in promotion to the reserved categories and permit it to proceed with making promotion to the reserved and unreserved categories in accordance with the result of such an exercise by vacating the order of status quo of April 15, 2019.

After the January 28 judgement, the top court has separately been dealing with the pleas filed by the Centre and other state governments related to reservation in promotion.

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