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Caste and Reservation in India — IndiaStand

Theme

Caste and Reservation in India

Caste and reservation is the constitutional machinery through which India reserves a share of public jobs, university seats and legislative constituencies for historically disadvantaged groups. At the central level it sets aside 15% for Scheduled Castes, 7.5% for Scheduled Tribes, 27% for Other Backward Classes and, since 2019, 10% for economically weaker sections, all measured against a Supreme Court ceiling of 50% that the EWS quota has already crossed. The system runs on categories the state defines, commissions that maintain the lists, and courts that police the limits — but its central gap is data: India has not counted caste beyond SC and ST since 1931, and the decision to enumerate it in the 2027 census reopens the whole ledger.

Updated

Central quota shares
SC 15%, ST 7.5%, OBC 27%, EWS 10%
Judicial ceiling
50% (Indra Sawhney, 1992); EWS sits outside it
Last caste count beyond SC/ST
1931
Constitutional basis
Arts 15(4), 15(5), 16(4), 46, 341, 342; commissions under 338, 338A, 338B
Coverage since 19509 recorded events ·100% from official & primary sources
1950–1954: 1 event19501960197019801990–1994: 1 event199020002005–2009: 1 event20102015–2019: 2 events2020–2024: 3 events20202025–2026: 1 event

Role

Caste and reservation is less a single policy than a standing system of state machinery: categories the government defines, lists that commissions maintain, percentages that statutes and amendments set, and limits that the courts police. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (/ministry/ministry-social-justice) is the nodal department for the Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Class welfare architecture; the Ministry of Tribal Affairs holds the Scheduled Tribes; the Department of Personnel and Training administers the job-reservation rosters; and three constitutional commissions — the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (Article 338), for Scheduled Tribes (Article 338A) and for Backward Classes (Article 338B) — guard the categories. The judiciary (/theme/judiciary) is a permanent actor rather than an occasional one: from Indra Sawhney’s 50% ceiling to the EWS and Maratha rulings, the courts have set the outer bounds of every quota, and the Bihar 65% challenge keeps that boundary live.

The fault line running through the system is data. India’s decennial census, run by the Registrar General under the Ministry of Home Affairs (/ministry/ministry-home-affairs) and now overlapping with the statistical apparatus of the Ministry of Statistics (/ministry/ministry-statistics), has not enumerated caste beyond SC and ST since 1931, so the size of the population reservation and welfare are meant to serve is estimated rather than measured. That gap connects the theme to labour and rural welfare — where reservation shapes public employment (/ministry/ministry-labour) and scheme targeting (/ministry/ministry-rural) — and to the Election Commission (/theme/election-commission), which administers the parallel reservation of legislative seats and, in the states, the caste-based reservation of local-body seats now being litigated. This desk tracks the categories, the commissions, the ceiling and the count as one institutional story.

Desk maintained by IndiaStand editorial cycles. Officeholders are transient; this dossier tracks the institution.

Timeline since 1947

  1. reference

    Constitution builds the reservation framework

    Articles 15(4), 16(4) and 46 enable special provisions for backward classes; Articles 341 and 342 let the President specify Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

    source 1

  2. reference

    Indra Sawhney fixes the 50% ceiling

    A nine-judge Supreme Court bench upheld 27% OBC reservation, introduced the creamy-layer exclusion barring better-off OBC members, and held total reservation should not ordinarily exceed 50% save in extraordinary circumstances.

    source 1

  3. reference

    Reservation extended into higher education; promotion conditions set

    The 93rd Amendment (Article 15(5)) and the Central Educational Institutions Act, 2006 enabled 27% OBC reservation in central institutions with a matching seat expansion; the same year, in M. Nagaraj, the Court conditioned SC/ST promotion reservation on backwardness, inadequate representation and administrative efficiency.

    source 1source 2

  4. reference

    102nd Amendment makes the NCBC a constitutional body

    A new Article 338B replaced the statutory National Commission for Backward Classes with a constitutional one, and Article 342A vested the listing of socially and educationally backward classes in the President and Parliament.

    source 1

  5. reference

    103rd Amendment adds a 10% EWS quota outside the 50% pool

    A reservation for economically weaker sections among citizens not covered by SC, ST or OBC categories was created, pushing central reservation past the Indra Sawhney ceiling.

    source 1

  6. reference

    Maratha quota struck down, reaffirming the 50% ceiling

    In Jaishri Laxmanrao Patil the Supreme Court struck down Maharashtra's Maratha reservation for breaching 50% and declined to refer Indra Sawhney to a larger bench, holding no extraordinary circumstances were shown.

    source 1

  7. reference

    Janhit Abhiyan upholds the EWS quota 3:2

    A five-judge Constitution Bench upheld the 103rd Amendment, the majority treating an economic-criterion quota as a permissible classification and the dissent objecting to the exclusion of SC, ST and OBC groups from EWS.

    source 1

  8. reference

    Bihar releases its caste survey and raises the quota to 65%

    Bihar published caste-survey findings and legislated reservation for backward classes, EBCs, SCs and STs up from 50% to 65%, which with the 10% EWS quota reached 75%; the Patna High Court struck the increase down in June 2024 and the matter went to the Supreme Court.

    source 1

  9. reference

    2027 census notified to record caste for all groups

    Following an April 2025 Cabinet decision, the Office of the Registrar General notified the census in the Gazette with a reference date of 1 March 2027 and caste recorded in the population-enumeration phase — the first full caste count since 1931.

    source 1source 2

Frequently asked

What is Caste and Reservation in India?
Caste and reservation is the constitutional machinery through which India reserves a share of public jobs, university seats and legislative constituencies for historically disadvantaged groups. At the central level it sets aside 15% for Scheduled Castes, 7.5% for Scheduled Tribes, 27% for Other Backward Classes and, since 2019, 10% for economically weaker sections, all measured against a Supreme Court ceiling of 50% that the EWS quota has already crossed. The system runs on categories the state defines, commissions that maintain the lists, and courts that police the limits — but its central gap is data: India has not counted caste beyond SC and ST since 1931, and the decision to enumerate it in the 2027 census reopens the whole ledger.
When was Caste and Reservation in India established?
Caste and Reservation in India was established 1950 (Constitution); Mandal implementation 1990; EWS 2019.
What does Caste and Reservation in India do?
Its remit covers The SC (15%), ST (7.5%), OBC (27%) and EWS (10%) reservation categories, The 50% ceiling and its judicial policing (Indra Sawhney and after), Constitutional commissions — NCSC, NCST and the NCBC, The backward-classes lists and creamy-layer income thresholds, Reservation in promotions and in higher education, The caste-enumeration question and the 2027 census, State-level caste surveys (Bihar, Telangana) and sub-classification.
What is the latest on Caste and Reservation in India?
As of 2026-07-28: 2027 census notified to record caste for all groups. Following an April 2025 Cabinet decision, the Office of the Registrar General notified the census in the Gazette with a reference date of 1 March 2027 and caste recorded in the population-enumeration phase — the first full caste count since 1931.

Official sources

The government's own pages for this institution — go straight to the primary.

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