Quota Should Not Continue For Indefinite Period: Supreme Court Judges
NDTV
In a 3:2 majority decision, the top court upheld the 10 per cent reservation for the economically weaker sections (EWS) in education and government jobs.
Reservation should not continue for an indefinite period so as to become a "vested interest" and the vision of the framers of the Constitution that there should be a "time span" for such quotas has not been achieved, the Supreme Court said on Monday in its majority judgment while upholding the EWS quota.
In a 3:2 majority decision, the top court upheld the 10 per cent reservation for the economically weaker sections (EWS) in education and government jobs that excluded the poor among the SC, ST and OBC categories.
Justices Bela M Trivedi and J B Pardiwala, who wrote two separate and concurring views with Justice J K Maheswari in upholding the EWS quota, referred to the time span envisaged by the framers of the Constitution for having reservation in the country.
Quoting B R Ambedkar, Justice Pardiwala said the idea of "Baba Saheb Ambedkar was to bring social harmony by introducing reservation for only 10 years. However, it has continued for the past seven decades. Reservation should not continue for an indefinite period of time so as to become a vested interest." Justice Trivedi, in her 24-page judgment, asked whether the country cannot move towards the ideal envisaged by the framers of the Constitution to have "an egalitarian, casteless and classless society", and stressed that there is a need to revisit the system of reservation in the larger interest of the society as a whole, as a step forward towards transformative constitutionalism.
