SC scrapped reservation for Jats

The Supreme Court on Tuesday scrapped reservation for the Jat community given by the UPA government in nine states of India in March last year.

Setting aside the notification extending the OBC status to Jats, the apex court slammed the Centre's decision to overlook the findings of an OBC panel that Jat is not a backward class. "We set aside the notification to implement Jats in the Central list of Other Backward Classes (OBC)," a bench of Justice Tarun Gogoi and Justice R F Nariman said.

"Caste, though a prominent factor, cannot be the sole factor of determining the backwardness of a class," the bench said, while referring to the historic judgement rendered by a larger bench on the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations on OBC reservations.

Ads by ZINC

What did the apex court say on reservations?

The apex court said the backwardness of a caste must be decided according to the economic and social status and not only on caste. "The inclusion of politically-organised castes like the Jats in the OBC list is not good for other backward classes," the Supreme Court ruled. The bench said though the Union of India is empowered under the constitution to provide reservation to a particular class, it cannot be permitted to do so on the basis of a decade-old-finding about the backwardness of a caste.