Reservation in Higher Education — Amendments

Amendment	Year	Description	Impact
1st Constitutional Amendment Act	1951	Inserted Article 15(4), enabling the State to make special provisions for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. This was a direct response to the State of Madras v. Smt. Champakam Dorairajan case.	Provided the foundational constitutional basis for affirmative action and reservation policies in India, including in education, by allowing the State to go beyond the general equality provisions to address historical disadvantages.
93rd Constitutional Amendment Act	2005	Inserted Article 15(5), empowering the State to make special provisions for the advancement of SCs, STs, and OBCs relating to their admission to educational institutions, including private unaided institutions (except minority institutions).	Directly enabled the implementation of reservation policies in private unaided educational institutions, overcoming the Supreme Court's ruling in P.A. Inamdar v. State of Maharashtra (2005) which had restricted such imposition. This paved the way for the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation) Act, 2006.
103rd Constitutional Amendment Act	2019	Inserted Articles 15(6) and 16(6), providing for 10% reservation for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in admissions to educational institutions (excluding minority institutions) and in public employment.	Introduced an economic criterion for reservation, a significant departure from the traditional social and educational backwardness criteria. It expanded the scope of affirmative action to include economically disadvantaged individuals from unreserved categories, and its validity was upheld by the Supreme Court in Janhit Abhiyan v. Union of India (2022).