New Delhi: The Centre on Monday urged the Supreme Court to constitute a seven-judge bench to revisit its 2018 verdict providing for the exclusion of creamy layer within the SC/ST from reservation benefits in jobs.
Seeking the reconsideration of 2018 judgment providing for the exclusion of the creamy layer within the SC/ST from reservation benefits, attorney-general K.K. Venugopal sought setting up a seven-judge bench for a relook at last year’s judgment.
A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde, told the attorney-general that the question whether the exclusion of creamy layer among SC/ST can be referred to a larger bench or not will be dealt with after two weeks.
Mr Venugopal said that the questions to be addressed by the larger bench have already been framed.
The plea by the attorney-general was resisted by a number of lawyers who felt that there was infirmity with the 2018 judgment.
The entire matter came up in the course of the hearing of a petition by Samta Andolan Samiti and former Indian Administrative Service officer O.P. Shukla.
The top court by its September 26, 2018, judgment had said that the concept of creamy layer as provided in 2006 Nagaraj judgment would remain but it left it to the parliament to exclude the creamy layer from Presidential Lists contained under Articles 341 and 342.
“We do not think it necessary to go into whether Parliament may or may not exclude the creamy layer from the Presidential Lists contained under Articles 341 and 342”, said Justice Nariman speaking for the bench .
Having left it to the parliament to exclude or not the creamy layer from the Presidential list contained under Articles 341 and 342, the court had said, “Even on the assumption that Articles 341 and 342 empower Parliament to exclude the creamy layer from the groups or sub-groups contained within these Lists, it is clear that Constitutional Courts, applying Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution to exclude the creamy layer cannot be said to be thwarted in this exercise” as it can be done by parliament alone.
