Supreme Court: Can affluent among SC and STs be denied quota in promotions?

​New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Centre whether those affluent among the SC/ ST communities should be excluded from getting quota benefits of promotions in government jobs to allow those backward among these communities to "come up". In response, the Centre strongly supported the quota in promotions for government employees belonging from Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) communities before a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, saying the "stigma" and "imprint" of caste and backwardness remained attached to them irrespective of the fact that some of them have "come up". 

Referring to the "creamy layer" concept, Attorney General K K Venugopal said it was devised to exclude the affluent people from OBCs from availing benefits and this cannot be made applicable to SCs and STs as there was a "legal presumption of their backwardness". "They have to marry in their own caste. Even a well-off person of SC/ST community cannot marry in a higher caste," he told the bench, which also comprised justices Kurian Joseph, R F Nariman, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Indu Malhotra.