Plea Seeking Exclusion of Creamy Layer From SC-ST Quota To Be Heard By Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is set to hear a petiotion filed by the Samta Andolan Samiti seeking the removal of well offs among the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) from the reservation net, The Hindu has reported.

The Samta Andolan Samiti, which represents the poor among SCs and STs in Rajastan, has filed the petition in the apex court claiming “The uplifted/affluent and advanced sections of the SCs/STs snatch away the maximum benefit and the 95% members of these communities are at a disadvantage,” leading to a situation where “weak always remains the weak and the fortunate layers consume the whole cake.”

The petition which seeks to introduce the creamy layer in the SC-STs will be heard by a bench comprising of the Chief Justice Of India (CJI), Dipak Misra.

In a similar plea in 1992, called the Mandal case, a nine member bench had upheld caste based reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) along with introducing the creamy layer concept in OBCs. The creamy layer represents the prosperous among the marginalised castes. The creamy layer in the OBCs - those who earn more than a specified income, were excluded from the reservations following the court’s recommendations.

However, the creamy layer concept was kept confined to OBCs and not extended to SC and ST reservations. The plea seeks to correct this as affluent keep “snatching away” away the benefits and the impoverished who actually need the reservations continue to “bite the dust.

The petition refers to the an earlier judgement which maintains that a “means test [a scrutiny of the value of assets of an individual claiming reservation] should be taken into consideration to exclude the creamy layer from the group earmarked for reservation.”