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Supreme Court on Wednesday has reserved its judgment in the batch of petitions challenging the Madras High Court judgment which had declared the 10.5% internal reservation to the Vanniyar community under the existing 20% reservation to Most Backward Classes by the Tamil Nadu Government, unconstitutional.

Senior Advocate Colin Gonsalves appearing for the respondents in a connected matter to the Vanniyar reservation issue informed the bench that the Vanniyar Community has occupied most of the seats in the admissions of MBBS, engineering, law, and veteran sciences, and hold a dominant position amongst the backward classes.

A bench of Justice L Nageswara Rao and Justice BR Gavai has reserved its order in the batch of petitions challenging the Madras High Court judgment which had declared the 10.5% internal reservation to the Vanniyar community under the existing 20% reservation to Most Backward Classes by the Tamil Nadu Government, unconstitutional.

Whereas, Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan appearing for the respondent while continuing his arguments submitted that under Article 338B a consultation has to be done with the National Commission for Backward Classes, however, the same was not done while enacting the Act providing reservation to the Vanniyar community. "You had to follow 338B, you didn't follow it, the consultation was to be done with NCBC which was not done," Sankaranarayanan said. 

In addition to this Senior Advocate Rajiv Dhavan appearing for the respondent, A Mayilerumperumal submitted that population cannot be a basis for inclusion in a specific class. 

Dhavan further arguing on the contention of State's power to enact the law providing reservation to the Vanniyar community stated that "Their submission was that the powers are there, but my submission is the conclusion in Maharashtra Case that the President alone to the exclusion of all authorities has the power, there is only one Authority and that is the President alone and this is negative to them." 

Dhavan further argued that the Vanniyar Reservation Act 2021 is legislatively incompetent, the State has no power. "We are concerned with the identification of the community as Most Backward Class and quantum and it can not be denied but it is in Presidential power, whereas, it must be supported by carefully collected Data, in this case, which is not there."

(Retd.) Justice S Nagamuthu, Senior Advocate appearing for the respondent alleged that the bill was passed in a hurried manner, it was placed on a day and it was passed on the same day other than that when it was sent to Governor for assent the Governor gave it the assent within 2 days.

Another submission from the side of respondents was that the report of the commission was considered by the State Government, however, 14 members of the commission dissented from the suggestions made by the Chairman and the suggestions of the Chairman alone cannot be considered as the report of the commission.

Over the issue of sub-classification Vanniyar Community as the most backward class among the backward classes, Senior Advocate Bala Subramanyam submitted that the question answered in the Indira Sahani judgment a sub-classification can be done between more backward and most backward and that is what exactly the 1994 act had done, however, he further stated that the 1994 Act and 2021 Act are contrary to each other and they cannot follow parallelly.

In addition to this, Senior Advocate Jaideep Gupta appearing for respondent stated that there has been no effort to collect data to substantiate the point that the Vanniyar community are in the most backward category.

After the conclusion of arguments by the respondents, Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi appearing for the State of Tamil Nadu said that the State has not amended the list of communities in the backward categories, rather have sub-categories the class.

Senior Advocate Rakesh Diwedi appearing for the State argued that the cast was a basis of consideration but it was not the end, the Indira Sahani judgment has said that castes are equivalent to class.

Rebutting the argument made by Gonsalves, Senior Advocate Radhakrishnan appearing for the State stated that out of all the DGPs and DSPs none of them is from the Vanniyar community.

Earlier, Senior Advocate Radhakrishnan appearing for the petitioner S Ramadoss in a connected matter submitted that adverting to the impugned judgment, in the given situation, it is justifiable what the legislation has done. Equality of opportunity allows discrimination with reason.

Background:

A Madras High Court bench of Justices M. Duraisamy and Muralishankar while holding Tamil Nadu government’s law stipulating 10.5% internal reservation for Vanniyars within 20% quota allocated to Most Backward Castes (MBCs) in government jobs and educational institutions as unconstitutional has noted that it is an arbitrary micro classification.

The batch of petitions challenging the law was earlier listed before a bench of Justice MM Sundaresh (prior to his elevation to the Supreme Court) and Justice Kannamal.

The petitioners contended that after the insertion of the 102nd Amendment to the Constitution of India, the State Government has no power to identify/classify any community as Backward and it is the sole domain of the Parliament and hence, the impugned Act is in violation of the Articles 338-B and 342-A of the Constitution of India. Further, the appropriate authority to notify a caste will be the National Commission for Backward Classes which is Constitutional Body under Article 333-B of the Constitution of India, under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

It was further contended that Article 340 of the Constitution specifically provides that the President may, by order, appoint a Commission consisting of such persons as he thinks fit to investigate the conditions of Socially and educationally Backward Classes(SEBC) within the territory of India and the difficulties under which they work and make recommendations as to the steps that should be taken by the Union or any State to remove such difficulties. The State of Tamil Nadu has granted internal reservation of 10.5% out of 20% for Vanniyar Community alone. This is over 50% earmarked for MBC. In addition, the classification made on a particular premise of offering a larger slot to Vanniyars in MBC, is not in accordance with law.

Case Title: Pattali Makkal Katchi & Ors. Vs Mayileruperumal