Supreme Court’s Big Decision on Reservation… Those who have availed reservation once have no right to a general category seat

New Delhi. The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that if an applicant has availed of reservation in the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination, they are not entitled to appointment to general category seats, even if their total score is higher than that of a general category candidate. The apex court gave this decision while accepting the central government’s appeal against the Karnataka High Court’s judgment.

A bench of Justices J.K. Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi refused to consider the appointment of a Scheduled Caste candidate to the unreserved cadre of the Indian Forest Service (IFS), as the applicant had availed of reservation in the preliminary examination. The bench stated in its judgment that once a candidate from a reserved category has availed of reservation, they cannot be appointed to general category vacancies/seats. With this, the Supreme Court set aside the Karnataka High Court’s decision.

The High Court had ordered the appointment of a reserved category candidate to the general category simply because he had secured a higher final rank than a general category candidate. Now, the Supreme Court has said that since the reserved category candidate availed of reservation in the preliminary examination, they cannot be appointed to general category seats.

The Supreme Court, in its judgment, said that after availing of the reserved category benefit to appear in the main examination, the candidate, respondent number-1 (G Kiran), cannot later claim to be selected for a general seat merely because he performed better than 34 general category applicants in the subsequent stages. The Bench stated that if a candidate avails of any relaxation at any stage of the examination, they will not fall within the purview of the proviso to Rule 14(ii) of the Examination Rules, 2013, and in that event, for the purpose of the policy applicable to cadre allocation, they will not be included in the list of candidates selected on the general standard who are claiming their home state cadre against a general insider vacancy.

The case originated from a dispute concerning the Indian Forest Service Examination conducted by the UPSC in 2013. The examination was conducted in two stages: preliminary, main, and interview. The cut-off for the general category in the preliminary examination was 267 marks, while the cut-off for Scheduled Caste (SC) candidates was 233. In this examination, G. Kiran, an applicant from the reserved category, qualified with 247.18 marks by availing the relaxed cut-off, while Antony S. Mariappa, a general category applicant, qualified with 270.68 marks on the general cut-off.

However, in the final merit list, the reserved category candidate G. Kiran was ranked 19th and Antony was ranked 37th. During cadre allocation, there was only one general insider vacancy in Karnataka and no SC insider vacancy. The Central Government allotted the general insider post to Antony and assigned Kiran to the Tamil Nadu cadre.