Quota in Promotion Policy: Allahabad High Court stays demotion of SC, ST staff

A division bench of Justices Rakesh Tiwari and Mukhtar Ahmad passed the order on July 31 on a petition filed by Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and OBCs Welfare Association and others, through their counsel Nikhil Kumar.

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The court said: “Learned Standing Counsel prays for and is granted three weeks and no more time to file counter affidavit. Rejoinder affidavit, if any, may be filed within two weeks thereafter; till the next date of listing no demotion of employees belonging to the SC/ST category shall take place.”

Kumar said: “Our contention is that the state government form a commission or a committee ti look into the aspects of adequacy of representation of SC/ST employees in the government services, before deciding whether reservation in promotion should be given or not.”

Explaining further, Kumar said that, according to the M Nagaraja case decided by the Supreme Court in 2006, it was held that reservation in promotion could be granted to the SC/ST employees by a state government. “But the Supreme Court also held that for this to be done, the state will have to work out a quantifiable data on the adequacy of representation of these categories in the government services, besides looking into the aspects of administrative efficiency.”

During the Mayawati regime, the SC/ST employees were promoted through reservation. However, the policy was challenged in the Supreme Court, which held that the promotion was not as per norms in 2012.

“Our grievance is that the state government, making use of the said Supreme Court judgement, simply revoked the policy. The employees were not agitated on this either. But then the government decided to demote them on the excuse that the said policy was not upheld by the Supreme Court.

“Our contention is that the government should have gone for an exercise to work out a quantifiable data by constituting a commission or a committee to see whether the SC/ST category was adequately represented in state government services,” Kumar said.

The counsel added that, while revoking of a policy meant that there would be no further promotion on the basis of reservation, it would be against the norms of natural justice to demote employees who were duly promoted as per policy existing at a certain point in time.