The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has issued a notice to the state government on a petition challenging certain entries in Schedule I of the Tamil Nadu Government Servants (Conditions of Service) Act, 2016, permitting persons who converted to Christianity to retain their OBC status. The notice comes upholding that OBC status is not eternal and inclusion or retention of entities in the OBC list has to be constitutionally justified.
Petitioner G Kodeeswaran of Madurai, hailing from Kallar Community, which is a notified Backwards Class, recently applied for the Combined Civil Services Examination IV (Group IV Services), claiming the reservation pool meant for genuinely backward classes is being unconstitutionally diluted by the inclusion of various Christian denominations and converts who have never been subjected to any empirical test of social educational backwardness as mandated in Article 16(4) of the Constitution of India.
The petitioner has challenged specific entries in Schedule I of the Act, namely entries 17, 18, 66, 67, 78 (insofar as it includes Christian Nadar, Christian Shanar, and Christian Gramani), and 138 of Part A (List of Backward Classes), alongside entries 20, 31, 32, and 33 of Part C (List of Most Backward Classes). He has claimed that these entries collectively confer Backwards Class or Most Backwards Class status on various Christian communities and converts to Christianity.Tamil Nadu made such inclusions in 1980 despite the contrary opinions expressed by expert bodies such as the First and Second Backwards Classes Commission.
Highlighting that the petitioner has established a prima facie case warranting deep constitutional scrutiny, the HC bench of Justices GR Swaminathan and MD Sumathi said the petition reveals some deeply unsettling anomalies and raises serious doubts about the constitutional validity of the impugned entries in Schedule-I of the Tamil Nadu Government Servants (Conditions of Service) Act. A notice has been issued to the state and the case has been adjourned by two months
