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Pramod Kumar Singh & Ors. v. State of Uttar Pradesh & Ors.

Writ Petition (Civil) · 2021 INSC 188Decided 16 Mar 2021
Writ Petition (Civil) No. 465 of 2020
Justice Uday Umesh Lalit · Justice S. Ravindra Bhat · Justice Hrishikesh Roy

Background

Following a 2013 recruitment drive for over 41,000 UP Police Constable, PAC and Fireman posts, litigation over disqualified candidates and unfilled vacancies led the Supreme Court to earlier direct the State to fill an additional 3,295 posts strictly by merit while following reservation rules. When the State published its revised select list on 11.11.2019, some candidates originally selected against reserved-category (OBC/SC/ST) seats were, due to their higher merit, repositioned into the "Open Category" list. The petitioners, general-category candidates who narrowly missed selection (several just short of the last successful candidate's cutoff marks), filed a writ petition arguing that these reserved-category candidates should not have been allowed to "shift" into open category seats, which they said prejudiced open-category aspirants like themselves.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the State's approach, first placing meritorious reserved-category candidates who qualified on merit into the open category, and then filling the vacated reserved seats with the next eligible reserved-category candidates, was a standard and legally sound method of applying reservation along with merit, and was consistent with the Court's own earlier directions to fill the 3,295 posts strictly in order of merit while following reservation principles. The Court noted the petitioners did not claim anyone with lower marks than them had been selected; their real objection was only to the inter-category "shifting," which the Court found neither illegal nor invalid since all these posts belonged to the same original 2013 selection process. Finding no merit in the petition, the Court dismissed it.

Lesson Learnt

Reserved-category candidates who qualify on merit are routinely moved into the open/general category list (a long-settled principle in Indian reservation law), and such adjustment does not by itself violate the rights of other open-category candidates unless someone with lower merit is shown to have been wrongly selected ahead of them.

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

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