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The West Bengal State Electricity Transmission Co. Ltd. & Ors. v. Dipendu Biswas & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 330Decided 7 Apr 2026
C.A. No.-010262-010262 - 2025
Justice Sanjay Karol · Justice Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh

Background

The West Bengal State Electricity Transmission Co. Ltd. advertised 30 posts of Junior Engineer (Civil) Grade II, including one post reserved for an Unreserved-category candidate with Low Vision disability (UR (PWD-LV)) and five posts for the OBC-A social category, with a notification condition that if no qualified UR (PWD-LV) candidate was available, the vacancy would go to PWD candidates of other categories by merit. Respondent No. 1 (a UR-category PWD-LV candidate) and Respondent No. 3 (an OBC-A category candidate who was also PWD-LV, but with no dedicated OBC-A (PWD-LV) horizontal slot) both competed for the single UR (PWD-LV) post, with Respondent No. 3 being more meritorious overall. The Calcutta High Court's Division Bench held that when a qualified unreserved PWD-LV candidate exists, the post must go to that unreserved candidate regardless of a more meritorious PWD candidate from a reserved category, reversing a Single Judge who had ruled otherwise.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court applied the "compartmentalised reservation" framework from Anil Kumar Gupta and Saurav Yadav v. State of UP, under which horizontal (disability) reservation posts are to be distributed across vertical (social) categories by first checking whether a more meritorious horizontal-category candidate from a reserved social category can be adjusted into the open/unreserved slot on merit, before filling it from within that specific unreserved category. Applying this, since Respondent No. 3 was more meritorious than Respondent No. 1 in the PWD-LV category overall (and there was no separate OBC-A (PWD-LV) horizontal quota into which he could instead be slotted), he was entitled to be adjusted against the Unreserved PWD-LV vacancy purely on merit. The Court clarified an important limiting principle: a reserved-category candidate claiming an unreserved post this way must not have availed any relaxation in eligibility criteria meant for reserved candidates, since unreserved posts require equal essential qualifications for all, and here nothing showed Respondent No. 3 had availed any such relaxation. Finding that the Division Bench had misunderstood the recruitment notification's true implication, the Court set aside the High Court's judgment and restored the original Single Judge order in Respondent No. 3's favour.

Lesson Learnt

In horizontal (e.g., disability) reservations that cut across social/vertical categories, merit, not the candidate's social category label, decides who fills an "unreserved" horizontal slot, provided the more meritorious reserved-category candidate did not benefit from any relaxed eligibility criteria meant for their reserved category; this ensures affirmative action doesn't disadvantage more meritorious candidates from reserved groups when competing on equal terms for unreserved posts.

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

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