The Equality Code

In one line

Articles 14 to 18 are one scheme, not five separate rights: a general guarantee, two specific prohibitions with enabling exceptions, and two abolitions.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the equality code consists of five articles. Article 14 guarantees to every person equality before the law and the equal protection of the laws. Article 15 prohibits discrimination against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, and by clauses (3) to (6) enables the State to make special provision for women and children, for socially and educationally backward classes and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, for their admission to educational institutions, and for the economically weaker sections. Article 16 guarantees equality of opportunity in matters of public employment, with corresponding enabling clauses in (4), (4A), (4B) and (6). Article 17 abolishes untouchability and forbids its practice in any form. Article 18 abolishes titles. In E.P. Royappa v. State of Tamil Nadu the Supreme Court held that article 14 is the genus and article 16 a species of it.

How the five fit together

The order is not accidental, and describing it correctly is worth marks on its own.

Article 14 is the general guarantee, and it applies to every person, citizen or not. It states the principle in the abstract: like should be treated alike.

Articles 15 and 16 are specific applications of that principle, and both are confined to citizens. Article 15 addresses the State's dealings with citizens generally; article 16 addresses one field, public employment. Each names the grounds on which the State may not discriminate, and each then carries enabling clauses permitting positive measures.

Articles 17 and 18 are abolitions, not guarantees in the same sense. They do not say the State must treat people equally; they abolish two specific institutions of inequality, untouchability and titles.

Two structural points follow.

Article 14 remains available even where 15 or 16 does not apply. A classification that does not rest on any ground named in article 15(1) is still tested under article 14 for reasonableness and non-arbitrariness. So article 14 is the floor beneath the whole scheme.

Articles 15 and 16 are not exceptions to article 14. They are instances of it, and the enabling clauses within them are instances too. That proposition matters most for article 16(4), and it was settled in Indra Sawhney, treated in [Reservation in Public Employment].

Article 14 as the genus

Facts. E.P. Royappa v. State of Tamil Nadu, AIR 1974 SC 555, (1974) 4 SCC 3, decided 23 November 1973. A senior member of the Indian Administrative Service, holding the post of Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu, was transferred to two posts he said were inferior, and alleged the transfers were mala fide and offended articles 14 and 16.