Supreme Court stays High Court judgement to redraw merit list of UPSC

The Supreme Court on Monday quashed the Madras High Court order that had earlier directed Union Public Service Commissions to redraw the merit list prepared for the Civil Services Exam for 2005 ignoring Rule 16(2).

The Madras HC had asked the commission to treat reserved category student under merit list as unreserved candidate. Hearing on the Centre’s plea on same, a bench comprising Justice CK Thakker and Justice LS Panta going against the HC judgement marked that the meritorious candidate belonging to SCs, STs and OBCs selected into such services should be counted under reserved category.

Centre in its Special Leave Petition said that the judgement will guarantee justice to reserved category student who has managed to qualify on their own merit and that denial of reservation facilities to them will put them at disadvantageous position to those who are placed lower in the rank among reserved category.

This time the result of Civil Services Exam 2007 was in accordance with HC judgement and was considered as provisional result. The Apex Court earlier on March 20, has said that going against Rule 16(2) is unconstitutional and marked that taking out the privileged given to the reserved candidate is a mockery to the concept of entire rule of reservation and that the HC judgement will reduce the number of post reserved for SC/ST/OBC and will add the same number of posts to unreserved category.

The Rule 16(2) ensure a person belonging to reserved group if get selected under general merit are able to get higher preference of service and are not placed at disadvantageous position with respect to other candidates of their community.

Also, the HC judgement was also against the concept of reservation which should not exceed 50%.

Now after the stay of HC judgement UPSC would have to rework the CSE 2007 final result which put some candidate at risk.