NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday said the executive and the legislature would decide whether persons, who had availed of quota benefits and were in a position to compete with others, were to be excluded from reservation. While referring to a seven-judge Constitution bench verdict of the apex court in August last year, a bench of Justices BR Gavai and Augustine George Masih made the observation on a plea. “We have given our view that taking into consideration the past 75 years, such persons who have already availed benefits and are in a position to compete with others, should be excluded from reservation. But it is a call to be taken by the executive and the legislature,” said Justice Gavai. The Constitution bench, by a majority verdict, held states were constitutionally empowered to make sub-classifications within the scheduled castes (SC), which form a socially heterogeneous class, for granting reservation for the uplift of castes that were socially and educationally more backward among them. Justice Gavai, who was part of the Constitution bench and penned a separate verdict, had said states must evolve a policy for identifying the “creamy layer” even among the SCs and schedule tribes and deny them the benefit of reservation. On Thursday, the counsel appearing for the petitioner referred to the apex court’s verdict asking for the policy to identify such a creamy layer. Justice Gavai said the apex court’s view was that the sub-classification was permissible.The petitioner’s counsel said the Constitution bench had directed states to formulate the policy and nearly six months had passed since. “We are not inclined,” the bench said.When the counsel requested to withdrawing the plea to file a representation before the authority concerned, which could decide on the issue, the bench allowed it.He argued states would not frame the policy and eventually the top court would have to intervene, to which the court said, “The legislators are there. Legislators can enact a law.”On August 1 last year, the apex court’s verdict was clear on the states making a sub-classification on the basis of “quantifiable and demonstrable data” of backwardness and representation in government jobs and not on “whims” and as a matter of “political expediency”.Also in top courtSame-sex marriage: Review pleas binnedThe Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a batch of pleas seeking review of its October 2023 verdict declining legal sanction to same-sex marriage. In a chamber hearing, the top court rejected the pleas. The court said it had carefully gone through the judgments and did not find any apparent error in its previous decision.SC orders status quo on Ansari landThe Supreme Court on Thursday ordered status quo on the construction of housing units under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana at a disputed site in Lucknow’s Jiamau whose ownership is claimed by the sons of late gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari. In 2020, a Lucknow civic body bulldozed a bungalow situated on the land.
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