Constitution of India – Art. 16 (1), (4) – Reservation for the persons with disabilities – Direct recruitment to the cadre of Civil Judge – Appellants, suffering from disabilities participated in the selection process under the disabled category and were declared unsuccessful in Preliminary examination – In the results declared, the cut off marks shown for each of the categories mentioned in the advertisement, however did not show for the category of persons with benchmark disabilities – Aggrieved thereagainst, writ petition by the appellants, dismissed by the High Court – Legality of: Held: No illegality or infirmity in the impugned judgments and orders passed by the High Court – Candidates who consciously took part in the process of selection cannot be permitted to question the advertisement or the methodology adopted by the respondents for making selection, on their having been declared as unsuccessful in the Preliminary Examinations – Reservation for the persons with disabilities has been treated as Horizontal Reservation-reservation under Clause (1) of Art. 16, and not the Vertical reservation-reservation under Clause (4) of Art. 16 – Reservation in favour of the Persons with disabilities was an Overall Horizontal Reservation and was not compartmentalised reservation – Respondents-High Court have declared the cut off marks for the persons falling under Compartmentalised Horizontal Reservation and not for the Overall Horizontal Reservation under which the appellants fall – Persons with benchmark disabilities for being adjusted in the category for which he or she had applied, had to secure the minimum cut off marks fixed for such category under which he or she had applied – Such fixation of cut off marks for other categories and non-fixation of cut off marks for the category of persons with benchmark disability could neither be said to be arbitrary nor violative of any of the fundamental rights of the appellants – Furthermore, nothing in the advertisement, Rules of 2010 under which the recruitment process was undertaken, also none of the notifications or amendment in the RJS Rules, 2010 make it mandatory on part of the respondents to declare separate cut off marks for the Persons with benchmark disabilities – No provision either in the Act of 2016 or in the Rules of 2018 could be said to have been violated by the respondents by not fixing the cut off marks for the Persons with benchmark disabilities – Respondents thus, rightly showed the cut off marks for all the categories except for the category of persons with benchmark disabilities – Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 – Rajasthan Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules, 2018 – Rajasthan Judicial Services Rules, 2010 – Judiciary. [Paras 8-12, 15-17]
Constitution of India – Art.16 – Reservation – Horizontal Reservation – Overall reservations and Compartmentalised reservations – Concept of:
Held: Horizontal Reservation is of two types-Compartmentalised Horizontal Reservation and Overall Horizontal Reservation – Under Compartmentalised Horizontal Reservation, the proportionate vacancies are reserved in each vertical reserved category – However, in case of Overall Horizontal Reservation, the Reservation is provided on the total post advertised i.e. such reservation is not specific to each vertical category – Where the seats reserved for the Horizontal Reservations are proportionately divided amongst the Vertical (Social) Reservations and are not intertransferable, it would be a case of Compartmentalised Reservations, whereas in the Overall Reservation, while allocating the special reservation candidates to their respective social reservation category, the Overall Reservation in favour of special reservation categories has to be honoured – Thus, the Special reservations cannot be proportionately divided among the Vertical (Social) reservation categories, and the candidates eligible for special reservation categories have to be provided overall seats reserved for them, either by adjusting them against any of the Social/Vertical reservations or otherwise, and thus they are intertransferable. [Paras 9, 14]
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Headnotes prepared by: Nidhi Jain. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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