A Socio-Legal Study Of Reservation in India With Special Reference To Human Rights

Abstract

Reservation as a concept is very wide. Different people understand reservation to mean different things. One view of reservation as a generic concept is that reservation is an anti-poverty measure. There is a different view which says that reservations are merely providing a right of access and that it is not a right to redressal.1 In Constitution of India it states that Article 15 (which prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth) and article 16 (equality of opportunity) to insert new clauses that allow the government to make “special provision for the advancement of any economically weaker sections of citizen” other than SC/STs and OBCs. In the international human rights context, the State may modify their obligations under international human rights treaties by entering reservations. Reservations are a particularly technical area of international law, but the study of this rather dry in the context of international human rights law is enlightening. According to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties VCLT, reservation is “a unilateral statement… made by a state, when signing, ratifying, accepting, approving or acceding to a treaty, where, it purports to exclude or modify the legal effect of certain provisions of the treaty. The aim of a reservation is to limit a state‟s obligations under a particular treaty. International Law is not formalistic „general political statement‟ or a „declaration of interpretation‟. States have availed themselves broadly of the possibility of reservations, both quantitatively and qualitatively. There is no doubt that the reservation is problematic for international human rights law. Human rights are clearly more of a „package‟ that most international normative instrument. Reservations also create problems legal certainty, making it difficult for individuals to ascertain the exact scope of the rights they have been guaranteed. In fact, international human rights law has also evolved specific notions of what reservations are permissible, who may decide on their permissibility, and what consequences flow from reservations.