‘Why should they have it?’: SC questions if children from ‘well-placed’ families should get reservation benefits

THe sublime margaret court on fri grappled with a oppugn that has more and more occupied the centre of India’s reservation debate: should the benefits of affirmative action continue to flow, generation after generation, to families that have already achieved substantial social and economic advancement through reservations?A bench of justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan repeatedly questioned whether children of socially mobile, professionally accomplished and financially secure parents should continue to claim reservation benefits under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category, indicating judicial concern over what the court saw as the perpetual continuation of quota benefits among already upwardly mobile sections.“If both parents are IAS officers why should they have reservations? With education and economic empowerment, there is social mobility,” Justice Nagarathna observed during the hearing.Also Read | Supreme Court drops adverse remarks against 3 NCERT book experts“So then again to seek reservation for the children, we will never get out of it. That is a matter we have to be concerned about. Also, what is the use then? You are giving reservation. The parents have studied, they are in good jobs, they are getting good income, and the children want reservation again. See, they should get out of reservation,” the bench added.The remarks came while the bench was hearing a petition challenging a Karnataka high court judgment that upheld the exclusion of a candidate from reservation benefits on the ground that he fell within the “creamy layer”.The case pertains to a candidate from the Kuruba community, classified under Category II(A) among Karnataka’s backward classes, who had secured selection as Assistant Engineer (Electrical) in the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited under the reserved category. However, the District Caste and Income Verification Committee denied him a caste validity certificate after concluding that his family fell within the creamy layer.Authorities found that the candidate’s family income stood at approximately ₹19.48 lakh annually and noted that both parents were government employees whose combined income exceeded the prescribed threshold.During the Friday hearing, the bench stressed that reservation was intended as an instrument of social upliftment and that once families had attained significant educational and economic advancement, the rationale for continuing reservation benefits to the next generation required scrutiny.“There has to be some balance. Socially and educationally backward, yes, but once the parents have attained a level because of taking advantage of reservation, if they are both IAS officers, both are in government service, they are very well-placed, social mobility is there. Now they are questioning the exclusion. This also has to be kept in mind,” it remarked.The court’s remarks echo a broader judicial conversation that has gained momentum in recent years over whether reservation benefits are increasingly being cornered by the more advanced sections within backward communities.That debate received perhaps its strongest articulation in August 2024 from a seven-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court, where Justice BR Gavai (who later took over as the CJI), in his separate opinion in the SC/ST sub-classification case, called for identification and exclusion of the “creamy layer” even among Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to take them out of the fold of affirmative action or reservation.However, the Union government had later clarified that the Supreme Court’s opinion was a non-binding recommendation and that the creamy layer concept will not be applied to the SC, ST categories, as there was no provision for the same in the Constitution.In Friday’s hearing, advocate Shashank Ratnoo, appearing for the petitioner, argued that salary income alone could not determine creamy layer status for government servants. He contended that the test under existing jurisprudence focused on the status of the parents, such as whether they belonged to Group A or Group B services, rather than their salary income.Ratnoo submitted that if salary income alone became determinative, even lower-ranking government employees such as clerks, drivers and peons could be excluded from reservation benefits merely because of inflationary salary structures.The counsel also warned that if all forms of income were aggregated for creamy layer determination, the distinction between OBC reservation and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) reservation would effectively disappear.However, the bench appeared unconvinced by the broader argument that social backwardness remained unaffected by educational and economic advancement.Justice Nagarathna specifically referred to the petitioner’s parents’ salaries, noting that the father drew a basic pay of ₹53,900 per month while the mother earned ₹52,650 per month, even as it agreed to consider the matter and issued notice.