Legislative and judicial contours of SC/ST quota in Lok Sabha and assemblies

Of 543 seats for elected representatives in the Lok Sabha, 84 seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and 47 for Scheduled Tribes.

The Supreme Court’s decision to scrutinise a two-decade old legal challenge to the continuance of reservation of seats for candidates from the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the Lok Sabha and state legislatures has coincidentally come at a time when the Narendra Modi government has brought a constitutional amendment to reserve one-third of seats for women in the two Houses of lawmaking.

Article 330 of the Constitution provides for reservation of seats for those from SCs/STs in the House of the People while Article 332 lays down a similar provision in legislative assemblies (AP)

On September 20, a Constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, framed two issues for final determination. The first pertained to the validity of the 104th Amendment Act of 2019 that extended the reservation for another 10 years (till January 25, 2030); the second, the exercise of the power by Parliament to amend Article 334 to continue such reservation.

Article 330 of the Constitution provides for reservation of seats for those from SCs/STs in the House of the People while Article 332 lays down a similar provision in legislative assemblies. Article 334 says reservation of seats for the two communities will cease after expiry of the period prescribed under this provision. Initially, it put a cap of 10 years for the cessation of the reservation, which was periodically increased. The latest such extension came through a constitutional amendment in 2019.

The Union government, on the day, told the court that the reservation for SCs/STs in the Lok Sabha and state legislatures must continue, conveying its resolve to defend the validity of the 2019 amendment and Parliament’s power to grant such extensions.

Even as the Constitution bench has fixed November 24 to commence the final adjudication of the matter, the deep-rooted history of reservation of seats for SC/STs , construed as a significant tool of affirmative action against historical and social injustices to the identified classes, coupled with the legislative and judicial chronicle, present an intriguing insight into the issue.

Pre-Independence and the Constituent assembly debates:

The proposal to give separate representation to SCs originated before India’s Independence when the then Prime Minister of England addressed a letter to Mahatma Gandhi on September 8, 1933. This letter stated: “Under the Government scheme the depressed classes will remain part of the Hindu community and will vote with the Hindu electorate on an equal footing but for the first 20 years, while still remaining electorally part of the Hindu community, they will receive through a limited number of special constituencies the means of safeguarding their rights and interests that, we are convinced, is necessary under present conditions.” Gandhi protested the proposal and gave his ultimatum of fast unto death.

A report of the advisory committee on minorities, in its first report in January 1947, recommended certain political safeguards for minorities by way of reservation of seats in legislatures on the basis of population. Accepting the recommendation, a draft article in the Constitution reserved seats for Muslims and SCs/STs in the Lok Sabha and state legislatures across India. For Indian Christians, seats were reserved only in the Bombay and Madras constituencies. The draft articles placed a 10-year time limit on these reservations.

In May 1949, the advisory committee, which had previously favoured reservation of seats for minorities apart from SCs/STs, passed a new resolution recommending abolition of the system of reservation for minorities. The committee, headed by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, noted that “communal electorates and weightage are definitely retrograde from the point of view of the general interests of the country.”

Later that month, BR Ambedkar, the drafting committee chairman, proposed to amend the draft articles to remove reservations for Muslims and Indian Christians. During the debates, majority of members of the Constituent assembly, including Jawaharlal Nehru, L S Bhatkar, Rohini Kumar Chaudhuri and Tajamul Husain, supported the resolution. “I think that doing away with this reservation business is not only a good thing in itself—good for all concerned, and more especially for the minorities—but psychologically too it is a very good move for the nation and for the world,” Nehru said on May 25, 1949.

At the end of the debate, the assembly adopted the draft articles (292 and 294) along with the drafting committee chairman’s amendment. Draft Article 295A (now Article 334), providing that reservations for SCs/STs in Union and state legislatures would be valid for a period of 10 years after the Constitution comes into effect was also adopted on August 25, 1949.

At the time, Ambedkar said that he preferred a longer time frame, though he suggested that the assembly stick to 10 years . He argued that if the SC/ST community had not been uplifted in 10 years, then the community would invent novel ways to ensure that their reservation benefits continued. It was also decided that Parliament should not be given the power to change the time limit and that such a change could be done only through a constitutional amendment.

Constitutional amendments and reserved seats:

By the Constitution (Eighth Amendment) Act of 1959, the provision was amended for the first time. The amendment substituted the words “ten years” with “twenty years” in Article 334.

Subsequently, 23rd Amendment Act in 1969, 45th Amendment Act in 1979, 62nd Amendment Act in 1989, 79th Amendment Act in 1999 and the 95th Amendment Act in 2009 kept extending the period by another 10 years .

The latest of the constitutional amendments was the 104th Amendment Act in 2019. The reservation was otherwise supposed to expire on January 26, 2020. Article 334 also provided for the reservation for the Anglo-Indian community, but this quota was abolished by the same constitutional amendment.

Of 543 seats for elected representatives in the Lok Sabha, 84 seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and 47 for Scheduled Tribes. At the state level, there is a reservation of 614 MLAs belonging to SCs and 554 MLAs belonging to STs out of a total of 4,120 seats.

The number has been fixed in accordance with the 2011 Census, which showed the proportion of SCs in the population at 16.7% and STs at 8.6%. ST communities are predominant in states such as Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and the North- East.

OnSeptember 20, the Supreme Court set about to hear a challenge to the validity of the 104th Constitutional Amendment Act of 2019, framing two issues . The first issue will deal with whether the 104th Amendment Act, 2019 was unconstitutional while the second will relate to the exercise of the legislative power by Parliament to extend reservation of seats for SCs and STs in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. “Whether the exercise of the constituent power of amendment to extend the period prescribed for reservation under Article 334 is constitutionally valid,” stated the second issue to be determined by the Constitution bench.

In its order, the bench also clarified that the adjudication of the two issues being framed will not impinge on the legitimacy of amendments prior to 2014 that extended the reservation for SC/STs.

Some of the questions raised in the clutch of petitions challenging the reservation claim that the impugned amendments deprive Indian citizens of their democratic rights, which include the right to freely cast votes in elections and to choose who to vote for and to stand for elections. Further, the petitions argue that the concept of such reservation violates the right to equality under Article 14, which entails equal opportunity for all citizens, including the right to equal representation in government. Repeated extensions of limited reservations appear to undercut equal representation for all, they added. The petitions further contend that the amendment was against the basic features of the Constitution, which included democracy. A basic feature is an essential characteristic of the Constitution that cannot be amended or changed.

Supreme Court’s views so far:

While the validity of the constitutional amendment on extending the reservation of seats for SCs/STs have come under the scrutiny of the Supreme Court for the first time, there have been some precedents highlighting the rationale of such a quota for the two communities.

In Babaji Kondaji Garad Etc Vs The Nasik Merchants Co-Operative Bank Ltd (1983), the issue before the top court was about reservation of seats for SCs/STs in the committees under the cooperative law. The Supreme Court cited Article 330 and 332, affirming their rationale.

“The felt necessities of the time and the historical perspective of class domination led to the constitutional guarantee of reservation so that India can truly be a Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic. A republic is made up of men and institutions. That is why democratic institutions have to be set up by providing for election and to make the democratic institutions truly representative, reservation of seats for those who on account, of their backwardness, exploitation and unjust treatment both social and economic cannot obtain representation because of the class domination. This is the genesis of reservation,” said the court.

In Soosai Etc Vs Union of India and others (1985), validity of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 came to be examined. In the judgment, the apex court referred to Article 330 and 332, noting: “The framers of the Constitution have taken great care to ensure that sufficient provision is made for ameliorating the conditions of certain backward classes found in India who suffer from social and economic disabilities.”

The Supreme Court judgment in the Indra Sawhney case (popularly known as Mandal Commission case) in 1992 differentiated between the principle of adequate representation, as envisaged under Articles 15 and 16, and principle of proportionate representation, which it said, is acceptable only under Articles 330 and 332 of the Constitution and that too for a limited period. “These articles speak of reservation of seats in the Lok Sabha and the state legislatures in favour of Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes proportionate to their population, but they are only temporary and special provisions,” it noted.

The judgment in Sobha Hymavathi Devi Vs Setti Gangadhara Swamy & Ors in 2005 defined quota benefits under Articles 330 and 332 as “constitutional reservations intending to benefit the really underprivileged.” This, along with a line of other Supreme Court judgments, have declared that the said reservation would benefit only those who belong to SC/ST communities and not those who claim to acquire the status by marriage.

In Chattar Singh and others Vs State of Rajasthan (1996), the Supreme Court distinguished between the concept of reservation for SCs/STs and Other Backward Classes (OBCs), holding the two classes cannot be clubbed. Testing the challenge to validity of Article 15 and 16 that provide for quota benefits for t SCs and STs in education and public employments, the court held that though OBCs are socially and educationally not forward, they do not suffer the same social handicaps inflicted upon SCs and STs.

“The founding fathers of the Constitution, having been alive to the dissimilarities of the socio-economic and educational conditions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and other segments of the society have given them separate treatment in the Constitution. The Constitution has not expressly provided such benefits to the OBCs except by way of specific orders and public notifications by the appropriate Government,” it said.

The constitutional provisions granting the right of representation to SCs/STs are located within a more complex matrix of political identities even as it seeks to ameliorate the institutionalised inequalities and have gradually become a political imperative as well. The Supreme Court’s decision to examine these rights is bound to spark an extensive and interesting debate, encompassing arguments on the Constitution, law and socio-economic aspects, which in turn will impact the formulation of democratic institutions in India.