'Unfortunate That Politics Drives Reservation' : Respondents Conclude Arguments In Vanniyar Internal Quota Case; Supreme Court Reserves Judgment

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court continued hearing submissions in the challenge to the Madras High Court order quashing Tamil Nadu law ("2021 Act") that provided 10.5% reservation in educational institutions and government jobs for the Vanniyar community out of the 20% reservation available to the Most Backward Classes. A Bench comprising Justices L. Nageswara Rao and B.R. Gavai heard counter arguments and rebuttal arguments and reserved the judgment in the matter. The State of Tamil Nadu had, primarily, submitted that the 2021 Act merely sub-classified within the 20% reservation provided to the Most Backward Classes, whereas the respondents argued that the State had attempted to 'identify' communities in derogation of the 102nd Constitutional Amendment Act without placing reliance on any quantifiable data. 'Clarification' argument does not hold water Senior Advocate, Mr. Gopal Sankaranarayanan appearing on behalf of original writ petitioner before the Madras High Court refuted the argument put forth by the Tamil Nadu Government that 105th Constitutional Amendment Act was clarificatory in nature. "The State appears to believe that the 105th Amendment can arrogate itself the authority to clarify what the Supreme Court had said in Jaishri Patil. Apart from the fact that it is impermissible, a perusal of the Amendment Act itself will reveal that it does no such thing." He argued that unlike the other Constitutional Amendments which intended to 'clarify', reference is made to the judicial pronouncement of the Supreme Court wherein the Apex Court had interpreted otherwise, the Statement of Object and Purpose of the 105th Constitutional Amendment Act neither states that it is clarificatory, not mentions the Maratha Reservation judgment. "The Amendment Act does not make reference to the Jaishri judgment unlike the 4th Amendment wherein the Statement of Object and Purpose mentions Sahagir Ahmed, the 24th amendment referred to Golaknath, 77th, 81th, 82nd referred to Indra Sawhney, 85th refers to Vir Pal and Ajit Singh and the 99th reference to the NJAC case. So, they always referred to the cases they thought were standing in the way." In order to demonstrate the extent of the doctrine of Separation of Power, he referred to Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc. 514 U.S. 211 (1995) "This sense of a sharp necessity to separate the legislative from the judicial power, prompted by the crescendo of legislative interference with private judgments of the courts, triumphed among the Framers of the new Federal Constitution. [See Corwin, The Progress of Constitutional Theory Between the Declaration of Independence and the Meeting of the Philadelphia Convention, 30 Am. Hist. Rev. 511, 514-517 (1925)]. The Convention made the critical decision to establish a judicial department independent of the Legislative Branch by providing that "the judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." Before and during the debates on ratification, Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton each wrote of the factional disorders and disarray that the system of legislative equity had produced in the years before the framing; and each thought that the separation of the legislative from the judicial power in the new Constitution would cure them. Madison's Federalist No. 48, the famous description of the process by which "[t]he legislative department is every where extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex," referred to the report of the Pennsylvania Council of Censors to show that in that State "cases belonging to the judiciary department [had been] frequently drawn within legislative cognizance and determination." The Federalist No. 48, pp. 333, 337 (J. Cooke ed. 1961). Madison relied as well on Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, which mentioned, as one example of the dangerous concentration of governmental powers into the hands of the legislature, that "the Legislature ... in many instances decided rights which should have been left to judiciary controversy." Id., at 336 (emphasis deleted).4 If the need for separation of legislative from judicial power was plain, the principal effect to be accomplished by that separation was even plainer. As Hamilton wrote in his exegesis of Article III, § 1, in The Federalist No. 81: "It is not true ... that the parliament of Great Britain, or the legislatures of the particular states, can rectify the exceptionable decisions of their respective courts, in any other sense than might be done by a future legislature of the United States. The theory neither of the British, nor the state constitutions, authorises the revisal of a judicial sentence, by a legislative act .... A legislature without exceeding its province cannot reverse a determination once made, in a...

'Unfortunate That Politics Drives Reservation' : Respondents Conclude Arguments In Vanniyar Internal Quota Case; Supreme Court Reserves Judgment

Sohini Chowdhury

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