General seats are open for talented candidates from reserved categories, Supreme Court clarifies again

New Delhi: In an important observation, the Supreme Court said that SC/ST/OBC candidates who make it to their merit list are entitled to be selected for open seats in the general category. The court said that the open category is open to all and the only condition to be eligible is merit, regardless of caste. A bench of Justices BR Gavai and KV Vishwanathan granted relief to SC/ST/OBC category petitioners who were not granted MBBS admission under the unreserved (UR) category government school (GS) quota in MP for 2023-24 even though they were more qualified and had scored higher marks in the entrance exam.

What did the court say in its decision?
The court said the principle is to be applied in both horizontal and vertical reservation. While vertical reservation applies separately to each of the groups specified under the law (such as SC, ST, OBC), horizontal quotas are provided for other categories of beneficiaries such as women, veterans, transgender community and persons with disabilities, which cut across the vertical categories.

The court said that the petitioners were denied admission in medical colleges of Madhya Pradesh in the 2023-24 session due to “incorrect application of methodology in applying horizontal and vertical reservation”. The court further said that a meritorious reserved category candidate, who is entitled to the ‘general’ category of the said horizontal reservation on the basis of his/her/her merit, has to be allotted a seat from the ‘general’ category of the said horizontal reservation. The GS quota was introduced by MP in 2023. The petitioners alleged that the process adopted by the government to further sub-classify the candidates into categories as UR-GS, SC-GS, ST-GS, OBC-GS and EWS-GS was completely illegal.

The court said that the limitation imposed by the candidates on horizontal reservation by separating different categories and shifting meritorious reserved category candidates to unreserved seats is totally inconsistent. In view of the law laid down by this Court, meritorious candidates belonging to SC/ST/OBC, who were entitled to be selected against UR-GS quota on the basis of their merit, have been denied seats against open seats in GS quota.

Qualification will become negative- Court
Citing previous SC judgements, the bench said that horizontal and vertical reservations shall not be viewed as rigid “slots” where the merit of the candidate, which otherwise entitles him/her to appear in the open general category, is closed. “It was observed that doing so would lead to communal reservation, where each social category is confined within the limits of its reservation, thereby negating merit,” the court said. The court further said that it should be noted that in the present case, the cut-off for UR candidates was much lower than the cut-off for SC/ST/OBC/EWS candidates. Thus, the respondents should have recruited the present appellants against UR-GS categories. It should also be noted that a number of seats from the UR-GS category were required to be transferred to the general category.