Ninth Schedule
Context:
- The Karnataka Legislative Assembly has passed a bill to increase the reservation of seats in educational institutions and jobs for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
- The leaders of the opposition wanted the State government to put pressure e on the Centre to bring an amendment to include the Bill in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution to ensure the increased reservation was implemented.
What is ninth schedule?
- The Constitution (First Amendment) Act of 1951 added the ninth Schedule, which contains a list of federal and state legislation that cannot be challenged in court.
- 13 new statutes were added to the Schedule by the first Amendment. There are currently 284 protected provisions as a result of later revisions made over time.
- It was established by the new Article 31B, which the government introduced along with Article 31A to safeguard legislation pertaining to agrarian reform and the abolition of the Zamindari system.
- Article 31B protects particular laws or enactments, whereas Article 31A covers “classes” of laws.
- The majority of the laws covered by the Schedule relate to agriculture and land, although there are other topics on the list as well.
- Article 31B also has a retrospective operation which means that if laws are inserted in the Ninth Schedule after they are declared unconstitutional, they are considered to have been in the Schedule since their commencement, and thus valid.
Why this amendment must be placed under the Ninth Schedule?
- It is clear that this amendment breaches the 50 % ceiling set by the Supreme Court in the 1992 Indra Sawhney v Union of India verdict.
- So, by placing this amendment under the Ninth Schedule it shields it from judicial scrutiny.
Source The Hindu
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