Inclusion in OBC reservation list cannot be treated as permanent, automatically justified: Madras HC

The Madras high court has held that a community's inclusion in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) list cannot be treated as permanent or automatically justified “merely because it has enjoyed reservation benefits for decades.”

A bench of Justices GR Swaminathan and MD Sumathi said on November 12 that the Tamil Nadu government must “demonstrate the constitutional validity of a community's inclusion” or “continued retention” in the list whenever someone challenges its classification.

Finding a prima facie case for examining the constitutional validity of reservation benefits extended to several Christian communities and converts in Tamil Nadu, the bench said the challenged classifications “raised serious doubts” over the absence of objective data establishing social and educational backwardness and the alleged disregard of recommendations made by expert commissions.

“There is nothing axiomatic or eternal about one’s OBC status. A clear case has to be made out for inclusion or retention in the OBC list. Merely because some entities have enjoyed the privilege of reservation for a few decades, would that necessarily mean that the original inclusion was constitutionally justified? We answer in the negative,” the high court said.

“As and when a challenge is mounted, the Government is obliged to demonstrate to the Court’s satisfaction that inclusion or retention of the concerned entity in the OBC list is constitutionally warranted or justified,” it said.

The court made the observations while admitting a petition by G Kodeeswaran, a member of the Kallar community, challenging the constitutional validity of provisions in the Tamil Nadu Government Servants (Conditions of Service) Act, 2016, which grant Backward Class (BC) and Most Backward Class (MBC) status to several Christian communities and converts.

The court questioned the constitutional basis for granting OBC reservation benefits to Christian communities and converts in Tamil Nadu, observing that in such cases, “even a Brahmin could claim such benefits by converting to Christianity and joining the Church of South India (CSI).”

It added that if such a possibility were true, it required a “serious re-examination” of the State's reservation framework.

“The petitioner's counsel startled us by asserting that if a Brahmin gets converted and joins the CSI denomination, he can enjoy OBC status as per the present statutory framework. If this assertion is true, then a serious re-think is certainly vindicated,” HC said.

The petitioner, who has applied for the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission's (TNPSC) Combined Civil Services Examination IV (Group IV Services), argued that the inclusion of these communities dilutes the reservation pool meant for genuinely backward classes.

He said that the State never established their social and educational backwardness through empirical data, as required by Article 16(4) of the Constitution.

The Court, however, reiterated that historical inclusion in the OBC list does not make a community's reservation status permanent or immune from judicial scrutiny.

The petitioner’s counsel, advocate K Suresh, relied on reports of two State Backwards Classes Commissions to question the inclusion. He pointed out that the first commission, headed by AN Sattanathan, declined to examine the claims of Christian communities for inclusion. The second commission, headed by JA Ambashankar, expressly found Christian converts from Backward Classes ineligible for inclusion in its 1985 report.