NEW DELHI: The Centre told the Supreme Court on Thursday that quota in jobs for the last 70 years had done little to help assimilate SCs and STs into the social mainstream and argued for unfettered reservation in promotions. It said SCs/STs continued to be treated as outcasts even after becoming government employees.

Pleading with a bench of CJI Dipak Misra and Justices Kurian Joseph, R F Nariman, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Indu Malhotra to refer to a seven-judge bench the “faulty” 2006 Nagraj judgment, which put “unimplementable” conditions for grant of quota in promotion, attorney general K K Venugopal said, “Things have changed tremendously for SC/ST communities in the last 70 years through reservation in jobs, but they still bear the brunt of caste stigma.”

“For the last 70 years, they have been given advantage over others because they had been rendered unequal through... years of exploitation and marginalisation. Job reservation has not erased caste stigma... Even if a person from the SC/ST community gets a job through reservation, he does not rise in the social hierarchy.”

Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, who appeared for general category employees, said, “Discrimination being faced by SCs/STs, which the AG is talking of, is practised by their own. Look at the BSP supremo who sits on a throne while others around her sit on the floor. Who is discriminating against whom? Generation after generation is being provided with the quota crutch to get accelerated promotion... We should not make them get used to it as it hampers their growth based on ability.”

Venugopal said there was no need to test backwardness of SC/ST persons as they have been deemed to be so by Parliament after an elaborate scrutiny. He said the Nagraj judgment’s mandate to determine adequacy of representation in government jobs for promotion purposes was impossible to compute as the verdict did not specify what should be the basis or yardstick for such determination. The third caveat ie, implications of quota for administration’s efficiency, put by the 2006 ruling, was again an unverifiable proposition, he said.

Senior advocate Indira Jaising also said SCs/STs continued to be under represented in higher posts. “Quota at entry level of employment could have a nexus with the social status of an SC/ST community member, but once s/he gets a job, her/his backwardness ceases and gets de-linked from the quota based right to leapfrog over colleagues through accelerated promotions,” Dwivedi said. Supporting Dwivedi, senior advocate Shekhar Naphade said, “The argument of the government and the SC/ST employees is that no matter what development and advancement has happened, they will continue to get reservation in promotion as a matter of right.”

The SC reserved its verdict and said the question was whether the Nagraj judgment needed to be reconsidered by a seven-judge bench.

