Revisiting The Equality Code: A Critical Study Of The 103rd Constitutional Amendment And EWS Reservation in India

ABSTRACT

The Constitution of India has a transformative vision through Articles 14, 15 and 16 which are collectively known to be equality code. This is to address the inequality and injustice that happened in history and to redress the entrenched structural disadvantage. Equality code was an affirmative action to repair the damages caused to historically oppressed people. This paper critically examines one of the aspects of this equality code and that too a recent one where there was a change in the criteria for reservations that was provided, the EWS quota. The 103rd Amendment of the Constitution introduced Article 15 (6) and 16 (6), that provided 10% reservation for the Economically Weaker Sections based solely on the economic criteria, but the issue arose when there was an explicit exclusion of Schedule Castes, Tribes and Other Backward Classes from its scope. This paper is to analyse the Janhit Abhiyan v. Union of India, which upheld the amendment along with historic judgements that dealt with reservations and to view these judgements from the view of transformative justice.