General category open to all candidates based on merit: What the SC said, and why it is significant

The Supreme Court last month held that a recruitment authority cannot exclude a candidate from consideration for open category posts solely because they belong to a reserved category, if they have secured marks above the general cut-off. Such exclusion, the court said, offends the guarantees of equality under Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution.

Upholding a Rajasthan High Court ruling, a Bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and A G Masih clarified that the open or general category is not a closed compartment reserved for candidates of a particular social group. It is a pool open to all candidates on a merit basis. Treating it otherwise, the court held, risks converting affirmative action into a form of exclusion.

The case stemmed from an August 2022 notification issued under the Rajasthan High Court Staff Service Rules, 2002, and the Rajasthan District Courts Ministerial Establishment Rules, 1986. A total of 2,756 vacancies for the posts of Junior Judicial Assistant and Clerk Grade II were advertised across the High Court, district courts, and the judicial academy.

The selection process had two stages: a written examination carrying 300 marks, followed by a computer-based typing test of 100 marks. Candidates who cleared the written examination were to be shortlisted for the second stage to the extent of five times the number of vacancies, with final selection based on aggregate marks from both stages.

When the written examination results were declared in May 2023, the recruiting authority prepared category-wise shortlists for the typing test. The cut-off for the general category was around 196 marks. However, several reserved categories had significantly higher cut-offs, in some cases exceeding 220 marks.

The effect of this method was stark. Candidates from reserved categories who had scored above the general cut-off, but below the higher cut-offs prescribed for their own categories, were excluded from the shortlist altogether. Despite outperforming many candidates who were shortlisted under the general category, they were denied the opportunity to appear for the typing test.

A Division Bench of the Rajasthan High Court was careful to draw the limits of its intervention. It did not strike down the reservation framework, nor did it hold that category-wise shortlisting was impermissible as a rule. The issue, the court said, was when and how category segregation was applied.

Article 16(1) guarantees equality of opportunity in public employment, while Article 16(4) permits reservation as an exception to address structural disadvantage. Article 14 underpins both by prohibiting arbitrary classification.

The problem arose, the court held, when the general or open category was treated as a compartment meant exclusively for general category candidates at the shortlisting stage. Once a candidate, regardless of category, crossed the general cut-off, excluding them from consideration for open posts amounted to denying equality of opportunity.

“The right of a candidate belonging to reserve category, who has proved to be more meritorious to be placed in the Open category list, is not a rule of reservation, but a postulate of equality based on merit,” the High Court said. Confining such a candidate to their reserved slot, it added, would amount to discrimination based solely on social identity.

The High Court directed that the shortlists be reworked by first preparing a general/open category list purely on merit, including reserved category candidates who had crossed the general cut-off, and only thereafter drawing up reserved category lists from the remaining candidates.

Before the Supreme Court, the High Court administration advanced three principal arguments. First, that candidates who had participated in the recruitment process were estopped from challenging it later. Second, allowing reserved category candidates to be considered in the open category at the shortlisting stage amounted to giving them a “double benefit”. Third, that precedents on “migration” of reserved category candidates apply only at the final stage of selection, not at intermediate stages.

The Supreme Court rejected all three, though on carefully delimited grounds.

On estoppel, the apex court held that participation amounts to acceptance of the procedure as notified, but not of an illegality that emerges only in its application. The court noted that the candidates could not have anticipated a situation where securing higher marks would result in exclusion.

“Participation of a candidate in a selection process implies acceptance of the prescribed procedure, but not of any illegality in the conduct of the said procedure or constitutional infirmity underlying it,” the Bench observed, concluding that the High Court was correct in entertaining the writ petitions once the defect became apparent after the declaration of results.

At the heart of the judgment lies a clear constitutional proposition — the open category is not a quota.

Agreeing with the High Court, the Supreme Court held that unreserved posts are available to all candidates based solely on merit. Reservation operates only in relation to earmarked posts; it does not permit the exclusion of candidates from open posts because of their social category.

“The open category is not a ‘quota’, but rather available to all,” the court said. “The only condition for a candidate to be shown in it is merit.”

Drawing from earlier Constitution Bench decisions, including Indra Sawhney and the 2021 ruling in Saurav Yadav, the court reiterated that a meritorious reserved category candidate who qualifies on open merit cannot be denied consideration for unreserved vacancies.

Treating the open category as meant only for non-reserved candidates, the Court warned, turns it into a form of “communal reservation” and would amount to compartmentalisation incompatible with Articles 14 and 16.

The Supreme Court also rejected the argument that reserved category candidates were receiving a double benefit.

A candidate avails a reservation, the court clarified, only when a concession or relaxation, such as lower qualifying marks or age limits, is applied. Mere identification as belonging to a reserved category does not amount to availing of the reservation.

Where a candidate secures marks above the General cut-off without any relaxation, their inclusion in the open category flows from merit, not reservation. “The premise underlying the argument of potentially conferring ‘double benefit’ to the candidates of the reserved category proceeds on an erroneous assumption that a reserved category candidate is necessarily availing the benefit of reservation at more than one/every stage of a multi-tier process,” the court held.

The court then turned to the question of migration, the principle under which reserved category candidates who score high enough are adjusted against open category vacancies.

Earlier rulings had confined migration to the final stage of selection, largely because those cases involved preliminary or screening examinations whose marks were not carried forward. In such situations, exclusion at an intermediate stage was reversible.

The present case, however, was different. The written examination accounted for 300 out of 400 marks and formed a substantive part of the final assessment. Exclusion at this stage permanently foreclosed consideration.

Once a candidate crossed the General cut-off at such a decisive stage, the court said, there was no question of “migration” at all. The Court said this is better understood as a “merit induced shift” where the candidate isn’t moving categories later, but competing in the open category on merit from the very start.

The Supreme Court upheld the High Court’s directions on how the selection process should be corrected. At the shortlisting stage following the written examination, all candidates must be assessed together on marks alone, including those from reserved categories. Only after the open merit list is drawn should the reserved category lists be prepared from the remaining candidates. The court also said that a meritorious reserved candidate cannot be forced into an open slot if that would cost them a better post or posting available under their reserved quota.

The court also acknowledged that reworking the lists could affect those already appointed. If vacancies were exhausted, less meritorious candidates might have to make way for those wrongly excluded earlier, though the High Court had directed that this be done with minimal disruption.

The court also stressed that merit cannot become a penalty; a reserved category candidate who qualifies on open merit cannot be pushed into an unreserved slot if that means losing a better post or posting available within their quota. This ensures that “reservation functions as a means of inclusion rather than an instrument of disadvantage,” the court said.

While acknowledging that revisiting the lists could disturb appointments already made, the judges said any correction must be carried out with minimal administrative disruption.