By Admin 
The Supreme Court has said that SC, ST, OBC and EWS candidates who have scored good marks in the selection process of government jobs are entitled to get a place in the list of unreserved category. The court has made it clear that general or open category seats are not for any particular social class. It is open to all. They should be filled on the basis of merit only.
In 2021, in the case Saurabh Yadav vs UP Government, the Supreme Court had ruled that on the basis of merit, a reserved category candidate can get a job from the general quota. Taking this system forward, the court has now made it clear that a merit-based list should be issued even in the initial stage of the selection process.
The decision can be understood in simple language like this:-
- If a reserved category candidate has scored more marks than the cut off fixed for general category in the initial stage, then he will get a place in the general list.
- If he gets more marks in the further stage also, he can get the job from the general list.
- If he gets less marks in the next stage then he can get a place back in the reserved category.
The bench of Justices Dipankar Dutta and Augustin George Masih has said that reserved category candidates who have scored good marks should not be disadvantaged because of their category. This would be against the concept of social justice. This matter is related to the selection process for a total of 2,756 posts of Junior Judicial Assistant and Clerk Grade-II in Rajasthan High Court, District Courts of Rajasthan and Judicial Academy. This process, which took place in 2023, was in two stages – the first stage was a written examination of 300 marks, and the second stage was a computer-based typing examination of 100 marks.
After the declaration of the result of the written examination in May 2023, the Recruitment Commission prepared the list for typing test. The cut off for general category was around 196 marks, whereas in many reserved categories the cut off was much higher than this. In some cases it was even above 220. Due to this, many reserved category candidates who had secured more marks than the cut off of the general category could not make it to the preliminary selection list.
Due to high cut off of their category, these candidates did not get the opportunity to appear in the typing test. The matter reached Rajasthan High Court. The division bench there said that category wise shortlisting is wrong. The High Court said that Article 16(4) of the Constitution allows reservation for deprived sections. Arbitrary classification will harm its real purpose.
Now the Supreme Court has upheld the order of the High Court. The Supreme Court rejected the argument that reserved category candidates should get double benefits. The court said that a candidate avails the benefit of reservation only when he gets benefits like lower qualifying marks or age relaxation. Merely being a member of a reserved category cannot in itself be considered as availing the benefit of reservation.