Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh has welcomed the Supreme Court verdict allowing sub-classification of Scheduled Castes to provide them reservation in educational institutions and employment, on Thursday.The apex court in its verdict mentioned that, “The Constitutional amendments envisaged to promote the depressed and the backward classes to bring them to the level of privileged class enjoying the status of an urban elite. Thus the reservation policy was rightly applied and it has become imperative to uplift the backward of the backwards, for which purpose sub-classification has become the order of the day.” The court opined that, “If any class is not integrated it can be further classified and such sub-classification of a class would not be violative of Article 14 of the Constitution, so long as persons in a class are not similarly situated.” “There is no violation of Article 341 (2) of the Constitution in sub-classification within the scheduled caste, as by such act, no caste is being included or excluded from the list of scheduled castes.” The Supreme Court also mentioned that the State must evolve a policy of identifying the creamy layer even from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes so as to exclude them from the benefit of reservation. Minister for social welfare Dola Bala Veeranjaneya Swamy said, “We welcome the SC verdict on permitting classification of SCs to provide reservation in education and employment. It was chief minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu who implemented SC categorisation into A, B, C and D. Our state government will come up with a good policy to implement the sub-classification of SCs for the benefit of Dalits.” State BJP SC Morcha leaders and activists celebrated the verdict by hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and garlanding his portraits as also pouring milk on these across districts. State BJP SC Morcha president Gudise Devanand said, “The SC verdict will provide justice to the Dalits to pursue studies and find employment through reservation.” The Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi has welcomed the SC verdict and said that they had been fighting for it for the last 30 years.MRPS founder president Manda Krishna Madiga told the media in Delhi, “We are grateful to PM Narendra Modi for the help he rendered. It was Chandrababu Naidu who earlier categorised SCs in united AP. We appeal to the state governments not to take up recruitment until the SC sub-classification has been done.” The demand for SC sub-classification has been there since 1994. The government led by Chandrababu Naidu issued an ordinance in 1999 for SC sub-classification and it was implemented from 2000-2004 by dividing the sub-castes into A (Relli), B (Madiga), C (Mala) and D (Others). This reservation helped generate 24,500 jobs in Group-I, II and other categories for the benefit of those from the SC communities for nearly four years. Subsequently, the apex court struck down the reservation for SC sub-classification. Former TD minister KS Jawhar said, “Our CM took the initiative to implement SC categorisation earlier itself. Now, we have got the SC verdict in favour of SC sub-classification and we welcome it.”
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