Chandigarh: Nayab Singh Saini, the chief minister of Haryana, said on Wednesday that the state government has subclassified reservations for Scheduled Castes (SCs) in government positions.

Speaking to the Haryana assembly, Chief Minister Saini stated: “The Supreme Court’s ruling a few days ago, which our cabinet had already approved through this notification regarding the classification of Scheduled Castes, is something I felt the house should be informed about during this session of the Vidhan Sabha.

The judgment made today on the Scheduled Caste reservation classification for government employment in Haryana will take effect right now. Additionally, the public may follow it on the Chief Secretary’s website after five o’clock.

By a majority decision of 6:1, the Supreme Court decided on August 1 that sub-classification within the reservation for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (SC/STs) is acceptable.

In this case, up to six different views were given. The seven-judge panel, presided over by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, rendered the decision, overturning previous rulings in the EV Chinnaiah case that had maintained that sub-classification was unlawful due to the homogeneous groups formed by SC/STs.

Judges BR Gavai, Vikram Nath, Bela M Trivedi, Pankaj Mithal, Manoj Misra, and Satish Chandra Sharma were on the bench in addition to CJI Chandrachud. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Bela M. Trivedi expressed her disagreement with the majority ruling that allowed sub-classification within scheduled tribes and scheduled castes.

Manoj Misra and Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud wrote a ruling in which they said that Article 14 of the Constitution allows for the subclassification of a class that is not similarly situated for legal purposes.

Since four of the seven justices on the Constitution Bench recommended denying SC/STs the advantage of affirmative reservation, the Supreme Court expressed its opinion that it was necessary to identify creamy lawyers in this group. According to Justice BR Gavai, the state has to develop a strategy for determining the creamy layer for Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes (SC/STs).

The highest court also said that in order to legitimately utilize the authority to subclassify under Article 16(4), it is necessary to gather quantitative evidence on the inadequate representation of the subcategories in the state’s services.

The highest court has ruled that as the castes are neither inherently included in nor omitted from the list, sub-classification within the Scheduled Castes does not violate Article 341(2).

According to the top court, subclassification would only be in violation of the clause if certain castes or groups of Scheduled Castes were given precedence or exclusive benefits over all of the seats set aside for the class.