Reservation in education and public employment: how the Constitution permits it

Reservation is often described as an exception to equality, but the Constitution treats it as part of equality itself. Article 14 guarantees equality before the law, while Articles 15 and 16 prohibit discrimination on grounds such as religion, race, caste, sex and place of birth. Those same articles then permit the State to make special provisions for groups that have faced social and educational disadvantage. The idea is that treating unequal people in exactly the same way can entrench inequality, so the law allows measures designed to level the starting point.

Article 15(4) allows special provisions for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. It was added by the First Amendment in 1951, after the Supreme Court struck down a state order on admissions in State of Madras v. Champakam Dorairajan. Article 15(5), added by the 93rd Amendment in 2005, extends that power to admissions in educational institutions, including private unaided institutions, except minority institutions protected by Article 30. Article 16(4) similarly allows reservation in public employment for backward classes that are not adequately represented in state services.

In 2019 the 103rd Amendment added Articles 15(6) and 16(6), permitting up to ten per cent reservation for Economically Weaker Sections in education and public employment. In Janhit Abhiyan v. Union of India in 2022, a five-judge bench upheld that amendment by a three-to-two majority. The decision is important because it accepted economic disadvantage, rather than only social and educational backwardness, as a basis for reservation, while the dissenting judges raised concerns about the exclusion of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes from the new category.

Reservation therefore raises questions that go beyond a single percentage. Courts have examined which groups count as backward, how backwardness is identified, whether benefits should exclude a better-off layer within a group, and how reservation in initial appointment differs from reservation in promotion. For a civil studies reader, the useful habit is to ask three questions about any scheme: what constitutional clause authorises it, whom it is meant to include, and what limit or safeguard the courts have placed on it.