Scheduled Castes
Constitutional Status and Article 341
Article 341 of the Indian Constitution empowers the President, in consultation with the Governor of a state, to specify by public notification which castes, races, or tribes shall be deemed Scheduled Castes for a particular state or union territory. Only Parliament, by law, can include or exclude communities from this Presidential Order list.
- Scheduled Castes currently account for approximately 16.6% of India's population (Census 2011); the 2021 Census data remains unreleased as of 2026.
- Article 330 reserves seats for SC/ST in the Lok Sabha in proportion to their share of the total population in each state; Article 332 does the same for state legislative assemblies.
- Reservation in Parliament is subject to delimitation, reviewed after every Census.
- The Supreme Court in E.V. Chinnaiah v. State of Andhra Pradesh (2004) held that SCs form a single homogeneous class and states cannot sub-categorise them for reservations — though a 7-judge Constitution Bench in State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh (August 2024) overruled this, permitting sub-categorisation within SC lists to give preferential treatment to more backward sub-groups.
● Tracked since March 09, 2026 · last seen April 13, 2026 · updates as the daily brief publishes
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