Backward Classes, the Creamy Layer and the Ceiling

In one line

Caste may start the inquiry but cannot finish it, the reservation may not normally exceed half, and the advanced among the beneficiaries are put out.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the identification of a backward class is not defined by the Constitution. Article 340 empowers the President to appoint a Commission to investigate the conditions of socially and educationally backward classes, and the Mandal Commission of 1979 was the second such body. In Indra Sawhney the nine-judge Bench held that a caste can be and often is a social class in India and may be the starting point for identification, that a backward class cannot be identified only and exclusively by economic criteria, that the creamy layer can and must be excluded, that there is no bar to classifying backward classes into backward and more backward, and that reservations under article 16(4) should not exceed fifty per cent, that rule applying to each year.

Who is backward

The constitutional starting point. Article 15(4) speaks of "socially and educationally backward classes of citizens"; article 16(4) speaks of "any backward class of citizens" not adequately represented in the services. The two are not identical: Indra Sawhney records that the backward class in article 16(4) is much wider, the accent there being on SOCIAL backwardness, though social, educational and economic backwardness are closely intertwined in the Indian context.

Article 340. The President may by order appoint a Commission to investigate the conditions of socially and educationally backward classes within the territory of India, the difficulties under which they labour, and the recommendations that should be taken to remove those difficulties and improve their condition. The first was the Kaka Kalelkar Commission of 1953; the second was the Mandal Commission of 1979, whose report of 1980 recommended twenty-seven per cent reservation for the Other Backward Classes and whose implementation produced Indra Sawhney.

Article 342A, inserted by the One Hundred and Second Amendment 2018. The President may with respect to any State or Union Territory specify the socially and educationally backward classes, and Parliament may include or exclude by law. The One Hundred and Fifth Amendment 2021 clarified that the States and Union Territories retain the power to prepare and maintain their own lists.

The Mandal Commission's own method, which the judgment sets out, used eleven indicators grouped as social, educational and economic, with social indicators weighted three points each, educational two and economic one, a caste or class scoring above a threshold being treated as backward.

And the rule the Court laid down.

Facts. M.R. Balaji v. State of Mysore, AIR 1963 SC 649, decided 28 September 1962 by Gajendragadkar J with four others. Mysore, acting on the Nagan Gowda Committee, classified communities as backward and more backward and reserved sixty-eight per cent of seats in engineering and medical colleges.