SC to pass order on plea for post-based reservation in Karnataka

The Supreme Court would on Thursday deliver its judgment on a plea by a group of general category employees of Karnataka 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 would pronounce the order on March 19.

The top court had on November 25, 2019, reserved its order a miscellaneous application by the general category of candidates.

Senior advocates Rajeev Dhavan, Shekhar Naphade and advocate Kumar Parimal, arguing for the applicant, had contended that the Karnataka had so far followed vacancy based reservations, resulting in over-representation of the SC/ST candidates in PWD and KTPCL.

They gave an example of sanctioned posts and working strength in the cadre of the chief engineer, vis-e-vis representation of SC/ST employees who were promoted on the basis of reservation. Out of total working strength of 32, the officers who belonged to the Scheduled Caste category was 15, which came around 45.45 %. In case of Scheduled Tribe, the number of officer was three, which was of 9.36 %. Only 14 officers were of general category which came to 43.75%.

Senior advocates Indira Jaising and Dinesh Dwivedi, appearing for the reserved category employees and the Karnataka government counsel senior advocate Basava Prabhu Patil, had raised questions on maintainability of the matter. They said the court should not intervene at this stage after the final judgement.

Notably, the court had passed the Pavitra II judgement on May 10, 2019 which had upheld the validity of the Karnataka's 2018 law for granting reservation in promotion to the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe employees.

The petitioners led by Pavitra had filed the instant application, days after seeking review of the May 10 judgement. They sought a restraint order against the state government on its circulars issued on May 15, 2019 and June 24, 2019 for implementing the law on reservation in promotion for the SC/ST employees.