The President of India has given assent to the 105th
The President of India has given assent to the 105th Constitutional Amendment Act, 2021 which enables States and Union Territories to identify their own Socially and Educationally Backward Classes and include them in a list to be published under Article 342A (1).
The 105th Constitution Amendment Act, 2021 has paved the way to bypass the ruling of the Supreme Court in the Maratha Reservation case (Jaishri Laxmanrao Patil v. Union of India) which stipulated that only the Central Government could notify socially and educationally backward classes and not the States or Union Territories.
Article 342A was inserted into the Constitution by way of the 102nd Constitutional Amendment Act. It reads as follows:
(1) The President may with respect to any State or Union territory, and where it is a State, after consultation with the Governor thereof, by public notification, specify the socially and educationally backward classes which shall for the purposes of this Constitution be deemed to be socially and educationally backward classes in relation to that State or Union territory, as the case may be.
(2) Parliament may by law include in or exclude from the Central List of socially and educationally backward classes specified in a notification issued under clause (1) any socially and educationally backward class, but save as aforesaid a notification issued under the said clause shall not be varied by any subsequent notification.
The following changes are now been introduced to the said Article by way of the 105th Constitution Amendment Act:
In Article 342A of the Constitution,—
(a) in clause (1), for the words “the socially and educationally backward classes which shall for the purposes of this Constitution”, the words “the socially and educationally backward classes in the Central List which shall for the purposes of the Central Government” shall be substituted;
(b) after clause (2), the following shall be inserted, namely:— ‘Explanation.— For the purposes of clauses (1) and (2), the expression “Central List” means the list of socially and educationally backward classes prepared and maintained by and for the Central Government.
(3) Notwithstanding anything contained in clauses (1) and (2), every State or Union territory may, by law, prepare and maintain, for its own purposes, a list of socially and educationally backward classes, entries in which may be different from the Central List.’.
Constitution (105th Amendment Act).pdf
