SUPREME COURT: MERITORIOUS CANDIDATES OF RESERVED CATEGORY NOT AVAILING RESERVATION BENEFITS SHOULD BE TREATED AS GENERAL CATEGORY

The Supreme Court in the case Deependra Yadav and others Versus State of Madhya Pradesh and others observed that if the meritorious candidates from the reserved category had not availed any reservation benefit or relaxation, then such reserved category candidates would be treated at par with unreserved or general category candidates on the strength of their marks.

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The bench comprising of Justice C.T. Ravikumar and Justice Sanjay Kumar in the case observed that despite not availing the reservation, if the meritorious candidates of the reserved category are treated as belonging to those reservation categories, then it would impact the benefit of the reservation to other deserving reservation category candidates lower down in the merit list of that category.

The judgement authored by the bench of Justice Sanjay Kumar stated that, this court may also note that Rule 4(3)(d)(III) of the Madhya Pradesh State Service Examination Rules, 2015 patently harmed the interests of the reservation category candidates, as even meritorious candidates from such categories, who had not availed any reservation benefit or relaxation, were to be treated as belonging to those reservation categories and they were not to be segregated with meritorious unreserved category candidates at the preliminary examination result stage and as a result of it, they continued to occupy the reservation category slots which would have otherwise gone to deserving reservation category candidates lower down in the merit list of that category, had they been included with meritorious unreserved category candidates on the strength of their marks.