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Farhan   26 April 2018

Help in reservation query

Dear friends, a certain Government advertised 3 posts out of which 2 were reserved. Is it legal? Doesn't it violate 50% ceiling limit? Please clarify. Thanks


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 3 Replies

R.Ramachandran (Advocate)     26 April 2018

No. It cannot be said so.  It all depends upon the roster point / unfilled vacancies etc.

Farhan   26 April 2018

Sir, look at this excerpt from judgment in Dr. Prana Vir Singh vs Chancellor, Chandra Shekhar Azad: "11. From the facts of the case it appears that initially there were nine posts of Subject Matter Specialist (Yield Production), which had been advertised by Annexure-2 to the writ petition. Out of these nine posts two were reserved for Scheduled Caste and three for Other Backward Class and four posts were in general category. In our opinion this reservation of five out of nine posts was clearly illegal as it exceeded 50% maximum permissible limit of reservation. In the Constitution Bench decision of the Supreme Court in P. G. Institute of Medical Education and Research v. Faculty Association, JT 1998 (3) SC 223, it has been observed (vide para 31) ; "Articles 14, 15 and 16 including Articles 16(4), 16(4A) must be applied in such a manner so that a balance is struck in the matter of appointments by creating reasonable opportunities for the reserved classes and also for the other members of the community who do not belong to reserve classes. Such view has been indicated in the Constitution Bench decisions of this Court in Balaji's case, Devadasan's case and Sabharwal's case. Even in Indra Sawhney's case, the same view has been held by indicating that only a limited reservation not exceeding 50% is permissible." From the above observation of the Supreme Court it is evident that reservation cannot exceed 50%. 12. There is no difficulty when there are an even number of posts in applying the above rule. For instance if there are 10 posts then a maximum of five posts can be reserved but the remaining five have to be kept in the general category. The difficulty however, arises when there is an odd number of posts. For instance if there are nine posts, 50% of that would be 4.5 Any number above 4.5 would exceed 50% reservation. Hence if five out of the nine posts are reserved it will be exceeding the 50% reservation and would become illegal in view of the above observation of the Supreme Court in the aforesaid decision. Hence the correct legal position is that if there are nine posts then only a maximum of four can be reserved and five must be kept for general category candidates. Hence the initial advertisement was illegal in so far as it exceeded the 50% maximum permissible limit of reservation. 13. However, it appears that subsequently one post was reduced and thus there remained only eight posts. Hence only four posts can validity be reserved, but the respondents have reserved five out of the eight posts, two for S.C. and 3 for O.B.C. Thus, only three out of eight posts have been left for the general category. This is clearly exceeding 50% reservation and hence is illegal."

R.Ramachandran (Advocate)     27 April 2018

In your first post, you did not mention that it was the INITIAL appointment to the post.  If that be the case, clearly the reservation exceeding 50% posts (not vacancies) is WRONG. 

Therefore, you have to be clear whether the advertisement pertains to number of vacancies, or the total number of posts.  Both are completely different.


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