[Paper Review] Constitutional Implementation of Affirmative Action Policies in India

Tayfun Sönmez, M. Bumin Yenmez|arXiv (Cornell University)|Mar 3, 2022

South Asian Studies and Conflicts6 citations

TL;DR

This paper proposes the 2SMH-DA mechanism as a constitutionally compliant solution for allocating heterogeneous positions in India’s affirmative action system, resolving long-standing legal inconsistencies. By applying deferred acceptance to a two-step process that respects vertical and horizontal reservations, it ensures merit-based allocation without violating constitutional principles, uniquely satisfying fairness axioms endorsed in the Saurav Yadav (2020) judgment.

ABSTRACT

India is home to a comprehensive affirmative action program that reserves a fraction of positions at governmental institutions for various disadvantaged groups. While there is a Supreme Court-endorsed mechanism to implement these reservation policies when all positions are identical, courts have refrained from endorsing explicit mechanisms when positions are heterogeneous. This lacunae has resulted in widespread adoption of unconstitutional mechanisms, countless lawsuits, and inconsistent court rulings. Formulating mandates in the landmark Supreme Court judgment Saurav Yadav (2020) as technical axioms, we show that the 2SMH-DA mechanism is uniquely suited to overcome these challenges.

Motivation & Objective

• To resolve decades of legal ambiguity and inconsistent rulings in India’s affirmative action system, particularly when positions are heterogeneous and reservation categories overlap.
• To address the failure of existing mechanisms—like the flawed SCI-AKG rule—in handling interlocking vertical and horizontal reservations without violating constitutional principles.
• To formalize and endorse a mechanism that satisfies the axioms derived from the Supreme Court’s Saurav Yadav (2020) judgment, ensuring fairness and consistency in allocation.
• To provide a technically sound, constitutionally compliant mechanism for allocating heterogeneous positions in civil service and higher education admissions under India’s complex reservation framework.

Proposed method

• Formalize the constitutional mandates from the Saurav Yadav (2020) judgment as technical axioms, including non-bossiness, consistency, and fairness in reservation implementation.
• Propose the 2SMH-DA (Two-Step Meritorious Horizontal - Deferred Acceptance) mechanism as a solution that sequentially applies deferred acceptance to open and reserved pools of positions.
• Ensure that candidates from vertical reservation (VR) groups who merit an open position are awarded such positions first, preserving the 'over-and-above' principle.
• Apply horizontal reservation (HR) only to positions not filled by merit-based VR candidates, using a minimum-guarantee basis to prevent exclusion of meritorious reserved candidates.
• Demonstrate that 2SMH-DA uniquely satisfies the axioms derived from the Saurav Yadav judgment, making it the only mechanism that is both fair and constitutionally compliant.
• Use a two-step process: first, allocate open and VR-protected positions via deferred acceptance; second, allocate HR-protected positions using the same algorithm on remaining candidates and positions.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How can a mechanism be designed to fairly allocate heterogeneous positions in India’s civil service and college admissions system while respecting both vertical and horizontal reservations?
• RQ2 What technical conditions must a mechanism satisfy to be consistent with the constitutional principles established in the Saurav Yadav (2020) judgment?
• RQ3 Why do existing mechanisms—such as the SCI-AKG rule—fail to satisfy constitutional fairness, and what are the specific flaws in their allocation logic?
• RQ4 Can a single, unified mechanism be developed that satisfies the axioms of fairness, consistency, and non-bossiness under overlapping reservation categories and heterogeneous positions?
• RQ5 How does the 2SMH-DA mechanism ensure that meritorious candidates from reserved categories are not disadvantaged by the reservation system?

Key findings

• The 2SMH-DA mechanism is the only mechanism that satisfies all the axioms derived from the Saurav Yadav (2020) judgment, including non-bossiness, consistency, and fairness in reservation allocation.
• The mechanism uniquely resolves the long-standing legal and operational crisis in India’s reservation system by ensuring that candidates from vertical reservation groups who merit open positions are not forced into reserved slots.
• By applying deferred acceptance in two steps—first to open and VR-protected positions, then to HR-protected positions—the mechanism prevents the 'inter se merit' failure common in prior systems.
• The 2SMH-DA mechanism eliminates the need for multiple, inconsistent court rulings by providing a single, constitutionally compliant, and technically sound allocation procedure.
• The mechanism ensures that horizontal reservations are implemented on a 'minimum guarantee' basis, meaning every HR-protected candidate who is selected counts toward their quota, even if they are meritorious.
• The paper demonstrates that the 2SMH-DA mechanism is robust to overlapping protected groups and heterogeneous positions, making it applicable to real-world civil service and college admission settings in India.