Reserved Category Candidate Can Claim General Category Seat Of Horizontal Reservation Based On Merit : Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Tuesday (Aug. 20) set aside the Madhya Pradesh High Court's order which refused to allow admission of the meritorious reserved category candidates to the unreserved (UR) category.

Upon placing reliance on the case of Saurav Yadav and Others v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Others, the bench comprising Justice BR Gavai and Justice KV Viswanathan observed that the candidates from the reserved categories like SC/ST/OBC, if they are entitled on their own merit in the UR quota, will have to be admitted against the UR quota.

“a meritorious reserved category candidate who is entitled to the General category of the said horizontal reservation on his own merit, will have to be allotted a seat from the said General category of the horizontal reservation. Meaning thereby such a candidate cannot be counted in a horizontal seat reserved for the category of vertical reservation like SC/ST.”, the court said.

Background

The case relates to the admission to the MBBS seats in which 5% of the total seats were reserved for Government School (GS) students.

Since several seats remained vacant according to Rule 2 (g) of the Madhya Pradesh Education Admission Rules, 2018, the vacancies were transferred from a GS-UR category to an open category.

The Appellants prayed that the meritorious students of reserved category who have studied in Government Schools must be allotted MBBS seats of unreserved category government school quota before they are released to the open category.

Appellants had challenged the decision of the Respondent-Department of Medical Education of not allotting MBBS Unreserved (UR) Category Government School (GS) quota seats to the meritorious reserved candidates, who had passed from the Government Schools.

However, the High Court dismissed the petitions, following this the appeal was preferred before the Supreme Court.

Arguments

The Appellants submitted that the High Court committed error in not recognizing the dictum passed in Saurav Yadav's case. He submitted that, on account of the erroneous application of policy, an anomalous situation has arisen wherein, in the UR-GS seats, the persons who are much less meritorious than the appellants, have secured admission, whereas the appellants, who are much more meritorious than the UR-GS candidates have been deprived the admission.

Per contra, the Respondents supported a further sub-classification into OBC-GS, ST-GS, SC-GS, URGS, and EWS-GS. He submitted that, since it was a case of horizontal reservation, it was not possible to shift the category of vertical reservation like the SC/ST/OBC/EWS to the horizontal category of UR-GS.

Supreme Court's Observation

Finding a force in the Appellant's contention, the Judgment authored by Justice BR Gavai acknowledged the fact that despite attaining higher marks than the unreserved category students, the appellants were not allotted the GS-UR seats.

“Undisputedly, the appellants who were meritorious and who could have been admitted against the UR-GS category were denied admission on account of an erroneous application of the methodology in applying the horizontal and vertical reservation. It is also not in dispute that many of the students, who secured much less marks than the appellants, have been admitted against the UR-GS seats. This is totally in contravention of the law laid down by this Court in the cases of Saurav Yadav…”, the court said.

The Court found the Respondent's move to restrict the migration of the meritorious reserved category candidates to the unreserved seats as unsustainable.

“In view of the law laid down by this Court, the meritorious candidates belonging to SC/ST/OBC, who on their own merit, were entitled to be selected against the UR-GS quota, have been denied the seats against the open seats in the GS quota.”, the court noted.

Having said so, on the question of what relief to be provided to the Appellants, the Court upon placing reliance on the case of S. Krishna Sradha v. State of Andhra Pradesh and Others found it appropriate to issue directions to the respondents to admit the appellants in the next Academic Session 2024-25 against the UR-GS seats.

Accordingly, the appeal was allowed.

Case Title: RAMNARESH @ RINKU KUSHWAH AND OTHERS VERSUS STATE OF MADHYA PRADESH AND OTHERS, SLP(C) No. 2111 of 2024

Citation : 2024 LiveLaw (SC) 589

Click here to read/download the judgment