A majority of a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court today upheld the validity of the 103rd Amendment of the Constitution which provides 10% reservation for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in admissions and government jobs. Three judges (Justices Dinesh Maheshwari, Bela Trivedi, and JB Pardiwala) upheld the Act and two judges dissented. Justice S Ravindra Bhat passed a dissent order calling the law discriminatory and violative of basic structure. Chief Justice U U Lalit also concurred with the view of Justice S Ravindra Bhat.
Justice Trivedi ruled that EWS quota law isn’t discriminatory. Justice Maheshwari said that EWS quota law doesn’t violate basic structure or equality code for taking into account economic criteria. It doesn’t also cause damage to any essential feature by exceeding 50% ceiling for quota since the ceiling is itself flexible.
The 103rd constitutional amendment was cleared by parliament in January 2019 and was instantly challenged in the Supreme Court.
While most opposition parties, including the Congress, did not oppose the law, as many as 40 petitions were heard by the Supreme Court against it, including by the state of Tamil Nadu which has among the highest reservation in the country arranged in a delicate balance.
The petitioners had questioned several aspects of the EWS quota, including how it could cross the 50 percent national cap on reservation set by the Supreme Court in 1992 and whether it changed the “basic structure” of the constitution.
The case was first presented before three judges, who referred it to a larger five-judge bench in 2019. This September, the court held a marathon six-and-half-day hearing of the case and reserved its verdict.
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