Justice Kuldeep Singh[1]
386. The protective discrimination in the shape of job-reservations has to be programmed in such a manner that the most deserving section of the backward class is benefited. Means-test ensures such a result. The process of identifying backward class cannot be perfected to the extent that every member of the said class is equally backward. There are bound to be disparities in the class itsel/ some of the members of the class may have individually crossed the barriers of backwardness but while identifying the class they may have come within the collectivity. It is often seen that comparatively rich persons in the backward class —-though they may not have acquired any higher level of education – are able to move in the society without being discriminated socially. The members of the backward class are differentiated into superior and inferior. The discrimination which was practiced on them by the superior class is in turn practiced by the affluent members of the backward class on the poorer members of the said class. The benefits of special privileges like job-reservations are mostly chewed up by the richer or more affluent sections of the backward classes and the poorer and the really backward sections among them keep on getting poorer and more backward. It is only at the lowest level of the backward class where the standards of deprivation and the extent of backwardness may be uniformed. The jobs are so very few in comparison to the population of the backward classes that it is difficult to give them adequate representation in the State -services. It is, therefore, necessary that the benefit of the reservation must reach the. poorer and the weakest section of the backward class. Economic ceiling to cut off the backward class for the purpose of job-reservations is necessary to benefit the needy sections of the class. I, therefore, hold that means test is imperative to skim-off the ‘affluent sections of the backward classes.
[1] This article is an excerpt from the judgment of Indira Sawhney v Union of India 1993 (1) SCT 448