Supreme Court permits sub-classification of SC and ST reservations

In a landmark judgement, the Supreme Court today ruled that sub-classification within the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/STs) reservation is permissible to grant separate quotas for more backwards within the categories. A seven-judge Constitution bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud gave the judgement by a 6-1 majority upholding the power of states to subclassify the reserved categories of SCs and STs into different groups based on their backwardness for extending the benefits of reservation. The Apex Court clarified that while allowing sub-classification, the state cannot earmark 100 per cent reservation for a sub-class. It also said the state has to justify the subclassification based on empirical data regarding the inadequacy of representation of the subclass.