STATE OF JAMMU AND KASHMIR Vs. TRILOKI NATH KHOSA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) WE fully endorse what has been said by our learned brother Chandrachud, J., but the profound depths of equal justice in public employment touched in his final paragraph (with which we ardently agree) impel a few concurring observations of our own.

(2.) IN this unequal world the proposition that all men are equal has working limitations, since absolute equality leads to procrustean cruelty or sanctions indolent inefficiency. Necessarily, therefore, an imaginative and constructive modus vivendi between commonness and excellence must be forged to make the equality clause viable. This pragmatism produced the judicial gloss of 'classification' and 'differentia', with the by-products of equality among equals and dissimilar things having to be treated differently. The social meaning of Arts. 14 to 16 is neither dull uniformity nor specious 'talentism'. It is a process of producing quality out of larger areas of equality extending better facilities to the latent capabilities of the lowly. It is not a methodology of substitution of pervasive and solvenly mediocrity for activist and intelligent - but not snobbish and uncommitted - cadres. However, if the State uses classification casuistically for salvaging status and elitism, the point of no return is reached for Arts. 14 to 16 and the Court's jurisdiction awakens to deaden such manoeuvres. The soul of Art. 16 is the promotion of the common man's capabilities over-powering environmental adversities and opening up full opportunities to develop in official life without succumbing to the sophistic argument of the elite that talent is the privilege of the few and they must rule, wriggling out of the democratic imperative of Arts. 14 and 16 by the theory of classified equality which at its worst degenerates into class domination.

(3.) MINI-classifications based on micro-distinctions are false to our egalitarian faith and only substantial and straightforward classifications plainly promoting relevant goals can have constitutional validity. To overdo classification is to undo equality. If in this case Government had prescribed that only those degree holders who had secured over 70 Per Cent marks could become Chief Engineers and those with 60 Per Cent alone be eligible to be Superintending Engineers or that foreign degrees would be preferred we would have unhesitatingly voided it.