Exclusion Of Caste From List Of Scheduled Castes At Later Date Cannot Take Away Promotion Granted Earlier: Gujarat High Court
The Gujarat High Court has ruled that benefit of caste reservation granted to a person belonging to Schedule Caste cannot be halted midway on exclusion of the concerned caste from the list of Scheduled Castes. In doing so the court quashed the demotion of an official who was promoted earlier based on his caste, but was later demoted after the caste he belonged to was excluded from list...
The Gujarat High Court has ruled that benefit of caste reservation granted to a person belonging to Schedule Caste cannot be halted midway on exclusion of the concerned caste from the list of Scheduled Castes.
In doing so the court quashed the demotion of an official who was promoted earlier based on his caste, but was later demoted after the caste he belonged to was excluded from list of scheduled castes. The court said that stripping of the promotion and the reversion of the petitioner cannot be sustained.
A division bench of Justice NS Sanjay Gowda and Justice JL Odedra held:
"a man acquires a caste the moment he is born and this is an involuntary act over which he has no control. The acquisition of caste at the time of his birth remains with him for the rest of his life. Thus, caste is an identity which adheres to a man from the time of his birth and endures during his entire life. If a person is born into a caste, which had been specified as a Scheduled caste at the time of his birth, this would mean that his caste was considered as socially backward at that point of time and required the benefits This would also mean that this person would continue to be socially backward during his entire life even though his caste, as a whole, could in future, advanced socially, as a consequence of which, the Parliament could decide to exclude the entire caste from gaining the benefits of reservation.
This would also apply to a person, who though born earlier to his caste being specified as a scheduled castes, takes the benefit of reservation by virtue of the fact that his caste was specified as a Scheduled caste after he was born and he had as a consequence availed of the reservation. The exclusion of a caste from the list of scheduled castes can only be prospective and the benefits that had accrued on a person who had been born into the caste when it was included in the list of scheduled castes would continue to adhere to him during his life time. This is fundamentally because caste is acquired by birth and comes to an end only on the death of the person"
The court said that a contrary view that a person would loose all the benefits of reservation that was initially conferred on him on his caste being excluded from the specification as a scheduled case, would mean that the law seeks to abandon an individual midway and expects him to fend for himself after promising him a secured and bright future.
It said that such an interpretation would mean that a person who had been granted a constitutional right would lose that constitutional right and be left in the lurch because of a Parliamentary law; such an interpretation of a parliamentary law would be constitutionally immoral.
"In our view, in order to limit the adverse impact of excluding a caste from being specified as a Scheduled caste by a Parliamentary law, it would be appropriate to hold that the persons born into a Scheduled caste, when it had been specified as Scheduled caste or a person who had taken the benefit of reservation because his caste had been specified as a Scheduled caste at that point in time, will be entitled to all the benefits of reservation during his entire lifetime and would not loose it midway.
Consequentially, any person who is born into a caste which was not specified as a scheduled case at the time of his birth (even though his caste was previously specified as Scheduled caste) will not be entitled to any benefit of reservation," the court added.
The respondent was appointed as a Lower Division Clerk (LDC) in the Employees Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) in 1995, under the Scheduled Caste category since he belonged to the Mochi caste which was at the time specified as Schedule Caste in the State by virtue of the Constitution Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976.
Thereafter in 2002 the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Orders (Second Amendment) Act was enacted by the Parliament, by which, area restrictions in respect of Mochis were introduced.
By this, only those Mochis who hailed from Dang district and Umbergaon taluka of Valsad district were specified as SCs; as against this earlier all Mochis in Gujarat, were specified as SC.
In 2003, the respondent was promoted to the post of Enforcement Officer/Accounts Officer and this promotion was based on the fact that he belonged to a reserved category.
Nine years after he was promoted, he was reverted to post of Upper Division Clerk with effect from 29.11.2012. This reversion was on the ground that he could not be specified as a Scheduled Caste by virtue of the 2002 Amendment.
He approached the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) which ruled in his favour. Against this EPFO moved the high court.
Upholding the CAT order the bench said since the respondent was born into the Mochi caste which had been specified as a Scheduled caste and had taken the benefit of reservation when his caste had been specified as SC, he would be entitled to all the benefits of reservation throughout his lifetime. As a result, the stripping of his promotion granted in 2003 by passing an order of reversion in 2012 cannot be sustained, it added.
The court dismissed the EPFO's appeal.
Case title: EMPLOYEES' PROVIDENT FUND ORGANIZATION & ORS. v/s RANJIT VASANTLAL MAKWANA
R/SPECIAL CIVIL APPLICATION NO. 21004 of 2016