Reservation – Horizontal and vertical reservation – Misapplication – Madhya Pradesh Education Admission Rules, 2018 – NEET UG 2023 – Vacancies transferred from one category to other categories, out of 89 unreserved seats for Government School students, 77 were sent to the open category – Appellants filed writ petitions praying that the meritorious students of reserved category who had studied in Government Schools must be allotted MBBS seats of unreserved category government school quota before they are released to the open category – Dismissed – Sustainability: Held: Not sustainable – Even in case of horizontal reservation, the candidates from the reserved categories like SC/ST/OBC, if they are entitled on their own merit in the GS quota, will have to be admitted against the GS quota (UR seats) – Horizontal as well as the vertical reservation would not be seen as rigid “slots”, where a candidate’s merit, which otherwise entitles her or him to be shown in the open general category, is foreclosed – The open category is open to all, and the only condition for a candidate to be shown in it is merit, regardless of whether reservation benefit of either type is available to her or him – The methodology adopted by the respondents in compartmentalizing the different categories in the horizontal reservation and restricting the migration of the meritorious reserved category candidates to the unreserved seats is unsustainable – Appellants were deprived of their legitimate claim of admission in the Academic Session 2023-24 for MBBS Course against the UR-GS category – Since the admission process for the said academic session is complete, respondents directed to admit the appellants in the next Academic Session 2024-25 for MBBS Course against the seats reserved for UR-GS category – Impugned judgments quashed and set aside. [Paras 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 21]
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Headnotes prepared by: Divya Pandey. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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