New Delhi: A seven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court has asked why those sub-castes among the backward classes which are well off should not be excluded from reservation lists.The bench is headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud. It is examining the matter of whether state governments can identify and sub-classify groups within the Scheduled Caste category, with an eye on who deserves more. The matter was referred to this bench by a five-judge bench in 2020, when it held that a coordinate bench’s judgement on sub-classification not being permissible needed to be reconsidered.Justice Vikram Nath, on the bench, asked on February 6 as to why affluent sub-castes should not be made to compete with the General category.According to The Hindu, he said:“Why should there be no exclusion [from the reservation list]? Some of these sub-castes have done better and gone forward. They should come out of reservation and compete with the general category…Why stay there?”Justice Nath favoured advanced sub-castes ceding ground to more backward ones.“The remaining sub-castes who are still backward, let them have reservation,” he said.The bench also comprises Justices B.R. Gavai, Bela M. Trivedi, Pankaj Mithal, Manoj Misra and Satish Chandra Sharma.According to The Hindu, Justice Gavai spoke on some families getting reservation benefits as a result of people entering into the public services.“Once a person gets into IPS or IAS, his children do not suffer from the disadvantages of others from his group who live in a village… Yet his family will get the benefits of reservation for generations,” he said.Justice Gavai also said that it is upto the parliament to decide whether such a group can be kept out of the reservation list.LiveLaw has reported that the arguments were opened by Gurminder Singh, the Advocate General of Punjab who said that reservation cannot be seen as an act of benevolence. He said:“ Reservation is no benevolence, is not an act of benevolence by the entitled to the needy at all. If at all it is, it is the compensation for centuries of oppression of the needy…”Singh highlighted the ‘heredity of caste’ as an issue and spoke of caste-based occupations that offer few escape routes.CJI Chandrachud, meanwhile, verbally observed the underlining nuance of equity seen in the light of exclusive, according to LiveLaw, noting that:“The same exclusion that applies to reservation per se when courses are reserved for backward communities, there is necessarily an exclusion of the forward community in competing for those courses, yet our constitutional jurisprudence permits it. Why, because we treat equality as a substantive equality, not formal equality therefore…. the same applies for the reservation of the backward community…”