Apex court rejects Centre’s review plea
The Supreme Court has dismissed the Union government’s petition for a reconsideration of its May 5 judgment, ruling that state governments have no power to draw up their own lists of backward classes after a constitutional amendment in 2018.
A five-judge bench, headed by justice Ashok Bhushan, held that there were not sufficient grounds to entertain the review petition filed by the Centre in May. “The grounds taken in the review petition do not fall within the limited ground on which review petition can be considered. The various grounds taken in the review petition have already been dealt with in the main judgment,” said the bench while also rejecting a plea to stay the judgment and an application for an open court hearing.
The other members of the bench included justices L Nageswara Rao, SA Nazeer, Hemant Gupta and S Ravindra Bhat. The review petition was considered by the judges in chambers on June 28. The order of dismissal was released on Thursday evening. The only option left before the union government is a curative plea, which is entertained by the top court in extremely rare cases.
In its review petition, the government contended that the judgment required a re-look because there were errors apparent on the face of the record. It questioned the interpretation given to the 102nd constitutional amendment by the majority of the judges on the bench. By a 3-2 majority, the May 5 verdict of the apex court-- which also unanimously struck down a state law granting reservation to the Maratha community in government jobs and education in Maharashtra -- held that state governments must rely on the Union government to include or exclude any community for granting reservation to socially and educationally backward classes (SEBCS).
The five-judge bench interpreted the 102nd constitutional amendment, whereby provisions were inserted to give constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes (Article 338B) and for empowering the President to notify the list of socially and educationally backward classes of state or UT (Article 342A).
While justices Ashok Bhushan and SA Nazeer maintained that the amendment was confined to the list to be issued for central government jobs, justices Rao, Gupta and Bhat said the scheme of the amendments took away the power of the state to identify backward classes.