Karnataka may have to revisit quota in promotion policy after SC order

Karnataka may have to revisit its existing policy of reservation in promotion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s stress on quantifiable data to justify such a quota. This is likely to affect thousands of SC/ST employees.

Law Minister J C Madhuswamy said he is not immediately aware of the top court’s stand. He said he would get more details and discuss with officials on the way forward.

In February 2017, the Supreme Court had struck down reservation in promotion accorded to SC/ST employees since April 1978. This resulted in the demotion of over 3,700 employees, promotion of nearly 5,000 employees and alteration in the seniority of nearly 65,000 employees.

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To circumvent this, the Karnataka Extension of Consequential Seniority to Government Servants Promoted on the Basis of Reservation (To the Posts in the Civil Services of the State) Act, 2017 was passed in November 2017.

The 2017 law was upheld in May 2019 by a Supreme Court bench led by Justice D Y Chandrachud. Karnataka was the first state to benefit from the SC ruling, which said a state’s view on the adequacy or inadequacy of SC/STs in jobs would not be questioned.

Now, however, another Supreme Court bench has called this 2019 order as bad in law for having breached the principles laid down in the 2006 judgement of the M Nagaraj case.

“What the Supreme Court has now said is that quantifiable data has to be cadre-wise and not for the entire strength of employees,” said Nagaraj, who is the president of an association of employees belonging to the minority, backward classes and general categories. He added that the 2017 law was flawed in the way it calculated the inadequacy of SC/STs.

Explaining further, Nagaraj said, “Karnataka has five lakh employees. There’s an 18 per cent reservation for SC/ST. That makes it 90,000. So, if there are 85,000 SC/ST employees, it was deemed inadequate and argued that reservation in promotion should continue. The Supreme Court has now said that inadequacy should be calculated cadre-wise. For example, if there are 100 chief engineers, 18 per cent of that should be 18. If there are 12 SC/STs in this cadre, then only six more people should be given reservation in promotion to ensure adequacy.”

Nagaraj said the association will submit a representation to the state government seeking compliance with the latest Supreme Court order. “The government now has to revisit the basis on which it gave reservation in promotions,” he said.

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