Ninth Schedule

Context:

The Jharkhand assembly has unanimously passed a bill of the Hemant Soren government to increase the reservation in government jobs and education institutions for Other Backward Communities in the state from 14% to 27%. The bill also increased reservation for Scheduled Tribes from 26% to 28% and SCs from 10% to 12%. With this, the percentage of total reservation in Jharkhand will be 77%, including 10% for economically weaker sections (EWS) among forward castes, unless the new law is struck down.
The state government has also recommended that the bills should be considered under the Ninth Schedule 9 of the Indian Constitution, to give it protection against legal scrutiny.
However, a 9-judge Constitution bench headed by CJI YK Sabharwal had ruled in 2007 that all laws placed under the Ninth Schedule after April 24, 1973, can be challenged in court if they violated Fundamental Rights. The verdict came in a case that challenged the TN quotas. ( IR Coelho case)

Ninth Schedule

The Ninth Schedule contains a list of central and state laws which cannot be challenged in courts. Currently, 284 such laws are shielded from judicial review. Most of the laws protected under the Schedule concern agriculture/land issues.
The Schedule contains a list of central and state laws which cannot be challenged in courts and was added by the Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951.
The first Amendment added 13 laws to the Schedule. Subsequent amendments in various years have taken the number of protected laws to 284 currently.
It was created by the new Article 31B, which along with Article 31A was brought in by the government to protect laws related to agrarian reform and for abolishing the Zamindari system.
While Article 31A extends protection to ‘classes’ of laws, Article 31B shields specific laws or enactments.
While most of the laws protected under the Schedule concern agriculture/land issues, the list includes other subjects.
Article 31B also has a retrospective operation which means that if laws are inserted in the Ninth Schedule after they are declared unconstitutional, they are considered to have been in the Schedule since their commencement, and thus valid.
Although Article 31B excludes judicial review, the apex court has said in the past that even laws under the Ninth Schedule would be open to scrutiny if they violated Fundamental Rights or the basic structure of the Constitution