EWS in the Roster — The 103rd Amendment and How Ten Per Cent Was Fitted In

Ten per cent had to come from somewhere. When reservation for economically weaker sections was introduced in 2019 and every establishment was told to recast its roster registers, the natural assumption in a great many sections was that the existing categories had each given up something. They had not. The whole of EWS came out of the unreserved pool, and you can verify that yourself by comparing the two annexures.

The constitutional basis

The Constitution (One Hundred and Third Amendment) Act, 2019 inserted Article 15(6) and Article 16(6), enabling reservation for economically weaker sections of citizens other than those already covered by the existing schemes. Article 16(6) permits up to ten per cent of posts, in addition to existing reservation.

This is a separate constitutional basis from Article 16(4). That distinction answers the question people most often raise about EWS — that Indra Sawhney struck down an economic-criteria quota in 1992. It did, but that quota was made under Article 16(4), and the holding was that a backward class under that clause cannot be identified on economic criteria alone. EWS is not a backward class under Article 16(4); it is a separate class under a clause inserted for the purpose.

Janhit Abhiyan

The amendment was challenged and upheld in Janhit Abhiyan v. Union of India in 2022, by a Constitution Bench of five judges, by a majority of three to two. Lalit CJI and Bhat J dissented.

The majority held that the fifty per cent ceiling laid down in Indra Sawhney is not inflexible and does not bar Parliament from providing reservation beyond it for a separate class, and that excluding the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes from the EWS quota is a permissible classification, since those groups are already covered by existing reservation.

The instruments and the effective date

The Department of Personnel and Training issued its first instruction by Office Memorandum No. 36039/1/2019-Estt.(Res.) dated 19 January 2019, followed by the operative Office Memorandum of the same number dated 31 January 2019, which carried the revised model rosters at Annexures II to V.

EWS reservation applies to direct recruitment vacancies notified on or after 1 February 2019. There is no EWS reservation in promotion.

The 2019 Office Memorandum required every Government establishment to recast its group-wise post-based reservation roster registers for direct recruitment in the revised formats, interpolating EWS with the existing categories. If a register in your section still runs on the pre-2019 format, it needs recasting.

The point that needs correcting

This is not a matter of interpretation. It is a comparison of two published tables, and it takes a few minutes to check. The reference tab of the Reservation Roster Trainer shows the current roster point by point if you want to see where the EWS points sit.

How the points were chosen

The 2019 Office Memorandum explains the method: where an EWS roster point coincided with a point already allotted to SC, ST or OBC, the next available unreserved point was allotted to EWS instead, and the principle of squeezing was applied.

Squeezing is the adjustment near the 100 and 200 boundaries that keeps each block of a hundred at exactly the whole-number quota, and it is why the sequence at the end of each block looks irregular. Points 98, 99 and 100 are EWS, SC and OBC; the run from 196 to 200 is EWS, OBC, ST, SC, OBC.

The first EWS point is 10, which is simply 1 ÷ 0.10, and the points then fall at roughly every tenth position, displaced wherever they would otherwise collide.

What EWS means for the fifty per cent question

With EWS included, the reserved share of the open-competition roster is 15 plus 7.5 plus 27 plus 10, which is 59.5 per cent, and the unreserved share is 40.5 per cent.

That is above the Indra Sawhney ceiling, and it is above it lawfully — because the majority in Janhit Abhiyan held that the ceiling does not bind Parliament when it provides for a separate class under a distinct constitutional clause. The ceiling continues to apply to reservation under Article 16(4), as the Maratha reservation judgment of 2021 confirmed. It is worth being precise about this in a noting: the fifty per cent rule has not been abolished, it has been held not to constrain Article 16(6).

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Related Reading

Next: vertical and horizontal reservation — persons with benchmark disabilities, ex-servicemen, and the interlocking method.