NEW DELHI, Feb 8: Regarding the legal question of whether a state government can create subclassifications inside scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in order to award reservations for admissions and public jobs, the Supreme Court postponed its decision on Thursday. Attorney General R Venkataramani, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, and states represented by senior advocates presented their cases before a seven-judge constitution bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud in an attempt to review the 2004 ruling in E V Chinnaiah, which held that all SC communities—who for centuries had been subjected to discrimination, ostracism, and humiliation—represented a homogeneous class that could not be subdivided.23 petitions are being heard by the bench, which also includes justices BR Gavai, Vikram Nath, Bela M. Trivedi, Pankaj Mithal, Manoj Misra, and Satish Chandra Mishra. The lead case was filed by the Punjab government to overturn the 2010 Punjab and Haryana High Court ruling. In the 2004 case of EV Chinnaiah vs. State of Andhra Pradesh, a five-judge constitution bench ruling held that SCs and STs are homogenous groups and that states cannot further subclassify them to grant quota inside quota for more deprived and weaker castes within these groups. The top court is currently considering references to revisit this ruling. Any subclassification of the Scheduled Castes would be against Article 14 of the Constitution, which guarantees everyone the right to equality, according to the Chinnaiah ruling.According to the 2004 ruling, castes considered to be SC cannot be removed off the Presidential List under Article 341 of the Constitution by state legislatures; only Parliament may do so.
