In a writ petition filed before the Madras High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution, seeking a writ of declaration that Schedule-I to the Tamil Nadu Government Servants (Conditions of Service) Act, 2016 (Tamil Nadu Act 14 of 2016), insofar as it included the communities in Sl.Nos.17, 18, 66, 67, 78 (to the extent it included Christian Nadar, Christian Shanar and Christian Gramani) and 138 of Part A, and Sl.Nos.20, 31, 32 and 33 of Part C, was ultra vires the Constitution, being violative of Articles 14, 15(1) and 16, a Division Bench of Justice G.R. Swaminathan and Justice M.D. Sumathi admitted the petition.
The petitioner also sought a direction to the respondents to delete the said communities from Schedule-I to the said Act and from the list of backward classes, most backward classes and de-notified communities. The Court stated that there was nothing axiomatic or eternal about one’s OBC status and that as and when a challenge is mounted, the government is obliged to demonstrate to the Court’s satisfaction that inclusion or retention of the entity concerned in the OBC list is constitutionally warranted or justified.
The Court was startled when the petitioner asserted that if a Brahmin gets converted and joins CSI denomination, he can enjoy OBC status as per the present statutory framework. It was stated that if this assertion was true, then a serious re-think was vindicated. The Court found that the present petition raised profound constitutional questions that struck at the very foundation of the reservations in Tamil Nadu.
The petitioner, a youth hailing from the Kallar community, a notified backward class, had applied for the Combined Civil Services Examination IV (Group IV Services) pursuant to a notification issued by the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC). Competing for the turns reserved for backward classes, he contended that the reservation pool meant for genuinely backward classes was being unconstitutionally diluted by the inclusion of various Christian denominations and converts, who had never been subjected to any empirical test of social and educational backwardness as mandated by Article 16(4) of the Constitution of India.
The petitioner explained before the Court how these communities found their way into the statutory schedules and also filed affidavits to showcase the historical facts. It was also contended that the foundational premise of the impugned entries was severely compromised by the latest pronouncement of the Supreme Court in The Secretary to Government v. Sameer Ahamed 2026 SCC OnLine SC 2187, wherein it was held that change of religion cannot, by itself, establish a new birth-based community identity and that the legal consequence of conversion could not be treated as a one-way bridge by which the old caste is simultaneously extinguished for one purpose and transported into a different community for another purpose.
Considering the petitioner’s pleadings, the Court found that any individual, including a member belonging to a forward class, can instantly claim backward class status merely by acquiring membership in CSI through baptism. The Court also found an even more glaring anomaly when the petitioner pointed to the differential treatment meted out to different categories of converts.
The Court held that the petitioner had established a prima facie case that warranted deep constitutional scrutiny. It held that the factual assertions regarding the lack of objective data, the explicit disregard of the Recommendations of the Expert Commissions, and the arbitrary nature of the classifications raised serious doubts about the constitutional validity of the impugned entries in Schedule I of the 2016 Act. Hence, the writ petition was admitted, and notice was ordered returnable by eight weeks. As the petitioner stated that there was some urgency as the recruitment processes were presently ongoing, the petitioner was permitted to take out an interim application.
