Tamil Nadu MP Thol Thirumavalavan on Friday filed a review petition in the Supreme Court against its verdict permitting the sub-classification of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to provide reservations in government jobs and education, Live Law reported.

The Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi founder and MP from Chidambaram, in his review petition, said that there were several “grave and manifest errors of law” in the judgement that needed to be corrected.

On August 1, a seven-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, in a 6:1 majority verdict, overruled the court’s 2004 judgement, which held that Scheduled Castes formed a homogenous group and hence could not be sub-divided into categories.

Some activists welcomed the judgement as an important identifier to carve out sub-quotas for the most backward communities within the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes fold. Critics, however, questioned the rationale of the verdict and claimed that it could deepen social divisions, weaken the Dalit movement and alter the landscape of caste-based politics in India.

In his review petition, Thirumavalavan said that the court “erred in directing the state to take steps to evolve a policy for identifying the creamy layer from the SCs/STs so as to exclude them from the benefit of affirmative action,” The Times of India reported.

The Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi founder added that the verdict was issued by “locating the incorrect reasoning in Articles 14 to 16 of the Constitution”.

Article 14 protects citizens from discrimination and guarantees equality before the law, while Article 15 prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. Article 16 prohibits discrimination in employment.

According to the review petition, the court had not cited empirical data to prove its claims that the economic status of those belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes correlated with a reduction in their social backwardness, The Times of India reported.

Thirumavalavan also noted that the judgment “erred in directing the states to evolve a policy for identifying the creamy layer from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, excluding them from the benefits of affirmative action,” according to Live Law.

In the court’s verdict, four of the seven judges also called for the identification of the creamy layer among the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes categories so that they could be removed from the reservation matrix.

However, the application of the creamy layer principle was not one of the questions before the bench and there were no arguments advanced on this during the court hearings.

“Since the application of ‘creamy layer’ test was not a question that arose for consideration before the court, the court erred in exceeding its jurisdiction in discussing and passing a direction to the States to formulate a policy for identifying the creamy layer for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes,” the review petition added.

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