Correct Answer : 10%
A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on Monday(7th Nov 2022), in a 3:2 majority decision, upheld the validity of the 103rd Constitutional Amendment which provides 10% reservation in government jobs and educational institutions to the ‘economically weaker sections(EWS) of the society but excludes the ‘poorest of poor’ among Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) from its scope.
Justices Dinesh Maheshwari, Bela M. Trivedi and J.B. Pardiwala delivered the majority opinions on the five-judge Bench in an hour-long session which saw the pronouncement of a Constitution Bench judgment live-streamed for the first time. Chief Justice U.U. Lalit, on his last working day, and Justice S. Ravindra Bhat, gave the minority view, which Justice Bhat authored.
In their minority view, Justice Bhat and Chief Justice Lalit held that though quota on the basis of economic deprivation, destitution and poverty was “per se permissible/valid” and even “constitutionally indefeasible”, the “othering” of socially and educationally disadvantaged classes, including the SC/ST/OBC/SEBC communities, on the ground that they already enjoy the benefits of a pre-existing 50% reservation on the basis of their caste and class origins, would amount to heaping injustice based on their past disability.
He said such an exclusion was simply “Orwellian” as the government’s statistics itself showed that the “bulk of economic deprived section of the society belonged to SC/ST/SEBC/OBC”.
He said the SCs make up 38% of the population, STs make up 48.4%, and OBCs constitute 13.86% of the 31.7 crore people living under the poverty line in the country. Forward castes or the unreserved category occupy only 5.85% of the Below Poverty Line (BPL) population.
The petitioners had argued that the exclusion of
SC/ST/SEBC/OBC had left only the “middle class” among the forward castes drawing less than ₹8 lakh as annual family income to reap the benefits of the EWS quota..
Source : The Hindu
