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Anupal Singh and Others v. State of U.P. through Principal Secretary, Personnel Department and Others

Civil Appeal · 2019 INSC 1099Decided 30 Sept 2019
Civil Appeal No. 4815 of 2019
Justice R. Banumathi · Justice A.S. Bopanna

Background

The Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission had advertised 6628 vacancies for Technical Assistant (Group-C) in the Agriculture Department in 2013, with category-wise reservation splits. After the written exam, the State discovered a wrongful calculation of category-wise vacancies (diploma holders had been wrongly counted against the OBC quota instead of the unreserved quota) and issued a revised requisition in 2014 to correct the reservation percentages as required by the UP Reservation Act, 1994. Several selected/interviewed candidates (including 906 candidates who were ultimately not given appointment orders) challenged this revision, and the Allahabad High Court quashed the post-exam selection process and ordered it redone, prompting both sides to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the State's revised requisition was a legitimate correction to ensure compliance with statutory reservation percentages under the UP Reservation Act, 1994, and did not amount to impermissibly "changing the rules of the game" mid-selection. It held that diploma holders were rightly required to be absorbed only against the "General/Unreserved" quota, that candidates who participated in the interview and failed could not later challenge the revised notification, and that filling unfilled horizontal reservation (women, ex-servicemen, etc.) from within the respective vertical category was valid government policy. The Court declined to use its extraordinary Article 142 power to direct appointment of 906 candidates beyond the permissible reservation ceiling, holding that such power cannot override statutory reservation limits, but it set aside the High Court's judgment, allowed the appeals, and granted the affected candidates a one-time age relaxation to apply in the next recruitment cycle.

Lesson Learnt

A government can correct a bona fide miscalculation in how reserved-category vacancies were computed, even after the exam, so long as the correction only brings the recruitment in line with statutory reservation law; and candidates who took part in a selection process cannot later challenge the very rules under which they competed once they do not succeed.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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