Karnataka okays quota within quota among Scheduled Castes after top court ruling

The Karnataka Cabinet on Monday approved the implementation of internal reservation among the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and decided to form a commission that will be tasked with collecting empirical data and finalising the quota structure. The decision comes months after a Supreme Court verdict supporting internal reservation for SCs and Scheduled Tribes (STs).
The commission, which will be headed by a retired High Court judge, has been given a three-month deadline to submit its report, following which the state government will proceed with further actions.
All ongoing recruitment processes have been paused until the commission submits its report.
A section of SCs has been demanding internal reservation alleging that only a few influential sub-castes were taking away a majority of the benefits, while many communities were still marginalised.
“Regarding providing internal reservation among SCs there were demands, discussions and thinking in Karnataka. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent verdict on the internal reservation among SCs, the cabinet today gave its approval to provide internal reservation among SCs,” state Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister HK Patil told reporters after the Cabinet meeting.
“After obtaining the data, it has been decided to decide on the next course of action. The government will ask the committee to submit the report in three months,” he said.
“From today if any recruitment is to be notified, that process will not take place, it will only start after the commission submits its report,” he added.
In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court on August 1 held that states are constitutionally empowered to make sub-classifications within the SCs, which form a socially heterogeneous class, for granting reservation for the uplift of castes that are socially and educationally more backward.
A seven-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, by a majority of 6:1, set aside the top court’s five-judge bench verdict of 2004 in the EV Chinnaiah vs State of Andhra Pradesh case, which had held that no sub-classification of SCs can be allowed as they are a homogeneous class in themselves.
Just ahead of the Karnataka Assembly polls last year, the previous BJP government’s cabinet had taken a decision on internal reservation, by recommending to the central government a 6 per cent internal quota for SC (Left), 5.5 per cent for SC (Right), 4.5 per cent for “touchables” (Banjara, Bhovi, Korcha, Kuruma etc) and one per cent for others.
Noting that the Justice AJ Sadashiva Commission report on internal reservation was rejected by the BJP government in 2022, Social Welfare Minister HC Mahadevappa said the then cabinet sub-committee headed by then Law Minister JC Madhuswamy had recommended internal reservation figures to the Centre. He also said the Congress, after coming to power, had also recommended internal reservation.
The Justice AJ Sadashiva Inquiry Commission, which looked into methods of equitable distribution of reservation facilities among SCs has, in its report submitted to the government in 2012, recommended internal reservation among the castes by broadly reclassifying all the 101 castes into four groups (Right, Left, Touchables and other SCs).
The Commission recommended giving 6 per cent reservation for SC (Left), 5 per cent for SC (Right), 3 per cent for touchables (Lambani, Bhovi, Korama, Koracha) and one per cent for others.