Meritorious Candidates Of Reserved Category Not Availing Reservation Benefits Should Be Treated As General Category : Supreme Court

In a recent decision, the Supreme Court observed that if the meritorious candidates from the reserved category had not availed any reservation benefit/relaxation, then such reserved category candidates would be treated at par with unreserved/general category candidates on the strength of their marks.

Affirming the decision of the M.P. High Court, the bench comprising Justices C.T. Ravikumar and Sanjay Kumar observed that despite not availing the reservation, if the meritorious candidates of the reserved category are treated as belonging to those reservation categories, then it would impact the benefit of the reservation to other deserving reservation category candidates lower down in the merit list of that category.

“We may also note that Rule 4(3)(d)(III) of the Madhya Pradesh State Service Examination Rules, 2015 patently harmed the interests of the reservation category candidates, as even meritorious candidates from such categories, who had not availed any reservation benefit/relaxation, were to be treated as belonging to those reservation categories and they were not to be segregated with meritorious unreserved category candidates at the preliminary examination result stage. As a result, they continued to occupy the reservation category slots which would have otherwise gone to deserving reservation category candidates lower down in the merit list of that category, had they been included with meritorious unreserved category candidates on the strength of their marks.”, the judgment authored by Justice Sanjay Kumar said.

An amendment was brought to Rule 4 of Madhya Pradesh State Service Examination Rules, 2015 (“2015 Rules)”. The difference between the old rule and the new rule was about the adjustment and segregation of meritorious students. The old rule provides that the adjustment and segregation of meritorious reservation category candidates with meritorious unreserved category candidates would be at the time of the preliminary results, whereas the new rule prescribes such adjustment and segregation only at the time of the final selection and not at the time of the preliminary/main examination.

The court relied on its judgment of Saurav Yadav and others v. State of U.P. and others, where also the court affirmed “the principle that candidates belonging to any of the vertical reservation categories would be entitled to be selected in the 'open category' and if such candidates belonging to reservation categories are entitled to be selected on the basis of their own merit, their selection cannot be counted against the quota reserved for the categories of vertical reservation that they belong to.”

Accordingly, the court found no infirmity in the decision of the State of M.P. to restore Rule 4, as it existed before the amendment.

“This being the settled legal position, it appears that the State of Madhya Pradesh itself realized the harm that it was doing to the reservation category candidates and chose to restore Rule 4, as it stood earlier, which enabled drawing up the result of the preliminary examination by segregating deserving meritorious reservation category candidates with meritorious unreserved category candidates at the preliminary examination stage itself. As this was the process that was undertaken after the judgment in Kishor Choudhary (supra), whereby a greater number of reservation category candidates cleared the preliminary examination and were held eligible to appear in the main examination, there can be no dispute with the legality and validity of such process”, the court observed.

Counsels For Petitioner(s) Mr. R.Bala Subramanyam, Sr. Adv. Mr. Jitendra Kumar Tripathi, Adv. Mr. Amit Sharma, AOR Mr. Alok Kumar, Adv. Mr. Ravi Kumar, Adv. Mr. Shashank Gaurav, Adv. 2 Mr. Gaurav Agarwal, Sr. Adv. Mr. Rameshwar Singh Thakur, Adv. Ms. Samridhi S Jain, Adv. Mr. Manan Daga, Adv. Mr. Chaitanya Dixit, Adv. Mr. Aman Varma, AOR Mr. Rakesh Khanna, Sr. Adv. Mr. Rakesh Mishra, AOR

Counsels For Respondent(s) Mr. Harsh Parashar, AOR Mr. Akash Lalwani, Adv. Mr. Saurabh Mishra, A.A.G. Mr. Sunny Choudhary, AOR Mr. Abhinav Shrivastava, Adv. Mr. Shivang Rawat, Adv. Mr. Atma Ram N. S. Nadkarni, Sr. Adv. Dr. Harsh Pathak, Adv. Ms. Shaveta Mahajan, AOR Mr. Mohit Choubey, Adv. Mr. Ss Rebello, Adv. Ms. Deepti, Adv. Mr. Gaurav Agarwal, Sr. Adv. Mr. Rameshwar Singh Thakur, Adv. Ms. Samridhi S. Jain, AOR Mr. Chaitanya Dixit, Adv. Mr. Rakesh Mishra, AOR

Case Title: Deependra Yadav and others Versus State of Madhya Pradesh and others

Citation : 2024 LiveLaw (SC) 342

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