On Thursday, the Supreme Court brought an end to the longstanding constitutional violation of caste bias in prisons while ruling the provisions contained within prison manuals attempting to perpetrate such violation in violation of the Constitution. More especially, the ruling extinguished discrimination that pervasively harms recognized disadvantaged groups: Schedule Castes (SC), Schedule Tribes (ST), and de-notified tribes. The Court urged all the states to make immediate changes for the eradication of any form of exploitation, particularly on castes, by making sure that no prisoner should be forced to take up work posts or housing on the basis of caste.
The three-member bench comprising JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra stated that all the states still indulging in such discrimination must immediately modify their rules and regulations in this regard and furnish the compliance report within three months. Also, the Union government was directed to remove from the model prison rules formulated in 2016 some provisions that enable states to tag some people as “habitual offenders,” which in turn suggests that caste bias is acceptable. The Supreme Court argues that such discrimination is against the Constitution on principles of equality, thus compelling prison authorities to bring their policies with the constitutional provision.
The ruling highlighted the culprits did instance labor based on caste, such as confining the marginalized castes into cleaning duty while confining the task of cooking to higher castes, as a clear violation of Article 15 of the Constitution that frowns against any form of caste-based discrimination. The Court observed that these practices do not satisfy the requirement of intelligible differentia and have no bearing on the reformation and rehabilitation of prisoners. CJI Chandrachud underlined that no group should be demeaned and stripped of better work opportunities and also opposed the suggestion that some group constitutes a scavenger class.
The judgment pointed out that the contents of prison manuals like the one issued by the 2016 Central Government continued to contain provisions that promoted caste bias.
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