General Category Is Open To All Meritorious Candidates, Regardless Of Them Falling In Reserved Or Unreserved Category: Gujarat High Court

The Gujarat High Court has held that a reserved category meritorious candidate should be allowed to merge in the class of unreserved category because of his own merits, as depriving such candidate from securing a birth in the unreserved category results into communally dividing a homogeneous class of meritorious candidates. In this case, an advertisement for the post of Sub-Inspector, Class III was issued by the Recruitment Board inviting online applications for a total of 1,382 posts to be filled in. The petitioners are candidates who took the preliminary examination and aspire to appear for the main examination. As per the Rule 8(f) of the Posts of Sub Inspector, Class III (Combined, Competitive Examination for Direct Recruitment) Rules, 2021, the number of candidates that were to be called for the purpose of appearing in the main examination were three times the candidates of each category i.e. reserved category and general category to the number of vacancies notified. The petitioners prayed for a direction that the action of the PSI Recruitment Board of including reserved category candidates in the list of general category candidates in the merit list of the preliminary exams is unlawful and in violation of Article 14, 15, 16 and 21 of the Constitution of India. The petitioners further prayed that a fresh merit list of candidates for appearing in the main examination should be prepared by calling upon three times the candidates of each category without including candidates of the reserved category in general category for the purpose of recruitment. The petitioners submitted that the respondents, rather than calling three times the number of candidates category wise, have included candidates belonging to the reserved category in the general category as well. It was their contention that this has resulted in restricting large number of candidates of general category. Further, the merit cut off for the reserved category has become higher resulting into the exclusion of some of the petitioners who belonged to the reserved category. It was submitted that by clubbing together general and reserved categories candidates together the respondents have applied the Rule of Migration in preparing the merit list. However, the Rule of Migration is to be applied only after the stage of main examination and not for the purposes of calling of candidates at the preliminary examination stage. Applying the Rule of Migration at the stage of preliminary examination, which is purely for screening purposes and then applying the same for main examination would amount to double reservation. Petitioners relied upon the case of Sunita Meena v. Rajasthan High Court and S. Jaffer Saheb and others v. State of Andhra Pradesh to establish the same. Per contra, the Respondents submitted that there is nothing like general categories and reserved categories. As per the respondents, it is settled that the term 'general categories' means a category open to all meritorious candidates, regardless of the fact that they belong to the reserved categories. Reliance was placed upon Bihari Lal Rada v. Anil Jain (2009(4) SCC, 1) and Saurav Yadav and others v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2021 (4) SCC, 542) to establish the same. The respondents further stated that the term "general category" cannot have two different meanings at two stages i.e. one meaning at the time of preliminary examination and different meaning at the time of main examination. In order to establish their point, the respondents provided three scenarios. In the first scenario, which was sought by the Petitioners, the Recruitment Board would not have to consider reserved category candidates in General category, though meritorious. In the second scenario, consideration of meritorious candidates would be done irrespective of category. Finally, in the third scenario, it was assumed that the Recruitment Board had also considered 'meritorious reserved candidates', who have not availed of any relaxation in terms of age and physical standards, in 'General Category'. Through these scenarios, the respondents highlighted that as per Rule 8(f), when it comes to choosing the number of candidates to be called for the preliminary examinations, especially when a large number of candidates have appeared, the number lower in the present case i.e. only a figure three times the number of vacancies have to be called. Thus, if all general category male candidates three times the number have to be called, i.e. 1,272 general male, the cut off marks in this category would be 51.25 marks. Considering the category of SC male, 147 top SC male would have to be considered making the cut off marks in this category to 71.25 marks. Since the cut off marks for general male category would be 51.25 lower than 71.25 for the SC male, the cut off for SC male would have to be lowered to 51.25. It is demonstrated from the "Scenario 1" that...

General Category Is Open To All Meritorious Candidates, Regardless Of Them Falling In Reserved Or Unreserved Category: Gujarat High Court

Padmakshi Sharma

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