The Madras High Court has disapproved of the practice of confining even highly meritorious candidates belonging to the reserved categories to the communal quota meant for them in public service without recruiting them under the open category on merits.
First Division Bench of Chief Justice Amreshwar Pratap Sahi and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy have upheld the decision of Justice N. Anand Venkatesh that those who had made it in the open category itself need not be pulled down to reserved categories.
The Division Bench dismissed a writ appeal preferred by the State government against a judgement passed by Justice Venkatesh in cases filed by 10 meritorious candidates who had been relegated to backlog vacancies for Most Backward Class (MBC) quota while recruiting schoolteachers.
Agreeing with Senior Counsel N.L. Rajah and advocate K. Balu, the Division Bench said: “It is not necessary to fill up backlog vacancies by placing highly meritorious candidates of the same category and by pulling them down from the open category/general turn.”
Though the government feared that reserved category candidates would get recruited in large numbers if they were considered under the communal quota as well as in general turn, the judges said, merit should be acknowledged, be it in any category.
“The increase in number of backward category candidates by itself does not in any way impinge any of the fundamental rights of any person in as much as no one’s fundamental right is being impinged. We, therefore, do not find any merits in the submissions of learned Special Government Pleader,” the Bench concluded.
