2023/12/22 by Orhan Aygn, Aygn, Orhan, Bertan Turhan +1
Social Sciences · #FOS: Economics and business #Judicial and Constitutional Studies #South Asian Studies and Conflicts #Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies #Theoretical Economics (econ.TH)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2312.14648
openalex publication_date 2023/12/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
India has enacted an intricate affirmative action program through a reservation system since the 1950s. Notably, in 2008, a historic judgment by the Supreme Court of India (SCI) in the case of Ashoka Kumar Thakur vs. Union of India mandated a 27 percent reservation to the Other Backward Classes (OBC). The SCI's ruling suggested implementing the OBC reservation as a soft reserve without defining a procedural framework. The SCI recommended a maximum of 10 points difference between the cutoff scores of the open-category and OBC positions. We show that this directive conflicts with India's fundamental Supreme Court mandates on reservation policy. Moreover, we show that the score-elevated reserve policy proposed by Sönmez and Yenmez (2022) is inconsistent with this directive.