Merit and Reservation: Supreme Court Verdict Explained
- Sakshi Mishra
- Feb 4
- 7 min read
New Delhi: India’s reservation policy was not born in a vacuum. It emerged from a historic obligation to uplift communities that had, for centuries, been pushed to the margins and denied even a fair chance at opportunity. The Constitution carved out a promise: affirmative action for Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backwards Classes (OBC), a structural answer to structural discrimination.
But as this constitutional promise collided with the hard numbers of merit lists, cut-off marks, and limited seats, the courtroom became a battleground. Who gets what, when, and how? That simple question turned into a complex legal puzzle, spawning petitions, constitutional challenges, and late-night hearings.
Over the years, India’s higher judiciary has continuously rewritten the script on reservations. From testing the limits of sub-classification within SC/ST groups to deciding how “merit within reservation” should be measured, each case has played out like a legal thriller: senior advocates locked in intense arguments, constitutional benches divided over interpretation, and judgments that could reshape the futures of millions.
In these high-stakes hearings, the courtroom drama is more than just rhetoric. Every precedent set, every paragraph in a judgment, redraws the fragile balance between merit and social justice and keeps the debate on reservations very much alive, both in law and in public conscience. The litigation reached the Supreme Court by way of a clutch of Civil Appeals arising out of a Karnataka High Court judgment that had unsettled recruitment circles. The core dispute involved selection processes for government posts where candidates from reserved categories had initially availed reservation-linked relaxations such as age concessions, but later claimed entitlement to be counted against general category vacancies once their scores exceeded those of the last selected general category candidate. The Union of India, bristling at the implications of the High Court’s view, filed appeals challenging the order, while a parallel set of appeals was moved by general category aspirants who objected to reserved category candidates being reclassified as “general” solely based on higher marks obtained at later stages of the examination. What followed in the Supreme Court was a dense yet high-stakes constitutional argument: senior counsel and advocates, including government law officers representing the Union, debated how the architecture of reservation under Articles 15 and 16 should be reconciled with the equality guarantee in Article 14 and the idea of “merit” in competitive examinations. Should a reserved category candidate who simply scores higher automatically vault into the unreserved pool, or does the prior use of reservation benefits like age relaxation create a constitutional and statutory barrier to such a shift? As the Bench pressed counsel on these nuances, the case transformed from a technical service matter into a legal thriller about the fault lines between equality, affirmative action, and the meaning of merit in India’s public employment regime.
At the heart of the controversy was not a move to dismantle reservations, but a sharper, more technical battle: where exactly does one draw the line between reservation benefits and eligibility for general category seats in recruitment and competitive examinations? The cases before the Supreme Court highlighted a recurring pattern: reserved category candidates, having availed relaxations such as age or fee concessions, later scored above the general cut-off and sought appointment against open-category vacancies, while general category aspirants protested that they were being pushed out of seats that rightfully belonged to the unreserved pool. Caught in the crossfire, government departments and recruitment boards struggled with inconsistent rules and conflicting precedents on how to classify such candidates under the existing legal framework. Through these appeals, the parties asked the Court to settle the issue once and for all: to lay down a clear, binding rule on when a reserved category candidate, particularly one who has taken the benefit of relaxation, can legitimately be treated as a general category selectee and when such a claim must be rejected so that courts and administrative authorities across the country apply a uniform standard instead of improvising case by case.
The Supreme Court’s ruling came from a two‑Judge Bench that quietly but decisively stepped into a debate which had confounded selection bodies for years. Comprising Justice J.K. Maheshwari and Justice Vijay Bishnoi, the Bench heard the batch of Civil Appeals and used the opportunity to untangle the legal knot around how reservation benefits, relaxation in criteria, and eligibility for general category seats are meant to interact. Over multiple hearings, the judges pressed both sides on the constitutional design of Articles 14, 15 and 16, and in their final judgment, they set out to clarify a long‑standing grey area: when a reserved category candidate who has availed relaxation can legitimately be treated as a general category selectee, and when such a claim would undercut the very logic of affirmative action. The decision, now being closely parsed in recruitment offices and coaching institutes alike, is being seen as a significant attempt to bring coherence to a field long marked by contradictory practices and confusion. The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Union of India & Ors. v. Sajib Roy & Ors. (2025 INSC 1083) grew out of several Civil Appeals challenging a Karnataka High Court ruling on government recruitment. The dispute looked technical but carried big consequences: if an SC/ST/OBC candidate takes reservation benefits such as age relaxation, fee concession, extra attempts, or relaxed standards, can that person later insist on being selected against a general/unreserved vacancy simply because they scored more than the last general category candidate? The Union of India disagreed with the High Court’s approach and appealed; a group of general category aspirants also came to the Supreme Court, arguing that such “migration” from reserved to general seats warped the idea of an open category. The case was heard by a two‑judge Bench of Justice J.K. Maheshwari and Justice Vijay Bishnoi. Government law officers represented the Union, while senior counsel and other advocates on both sides debated how the equality guarantee in Article 14 fits with the reservation under Articles 15 and 16. The Bench treated it as a serious constitutional question about how far affirmative action can go without swallowing the concept of open merit.
In its judgment, the Court drew a firm but simple line. First, it held that when a reserved category candidate has actually used any relaxation or concession in age, fee, attempts, qualifying standards and so on, that candidate cannot automatically claim a general category seat merely because of a higher final score, unless the specific recruitment rules for that exam clearly allow such a move. Second, it clarified that if a reserved category candidate has not taken any relaxation and still scores above the general cut‑off, that candidate may be considered for a general/unreserved post, but only if the recruitment notification and rules do not prohibit such migration. The Court basically turned years of confusion into a two‑step test: ask whether any relaxation was used, and then read the exact recruitment rules to see whether moving to the general category is legally allowed.
The ruling does not abolish or water down the reservation. Instead, it gives a structured way to handle tricky overlaps between quotas and open merit. For students and job seekers, the message is clear: if you belong to a reserved category and compete on fully equal terms (no relaxations), and the rules permit it, you can be counted in the general category if your marks cross the general cut‑off, freeing up reserved seats for others in your category. But if you have used relaxations, you will ordinarily remain within the reserved quota unless the scheme explicitly says otherwise. For governments, commissions and universities, the judgment takes effect from the date it was delivered; no extra notification is required, so all current and future recruitments must be run and interpreted in line with this precedent. From now on, any dispute about a reserved candidate claiming a general seat will revolve around two questions: did the candidate use any relaxation, and what exactly do the recruitment rules provide? That is the legal formula the Supreme Court has now locked in.
This judgment has wide‑ranging implications across the education and recruitment landscape. For students from SC/ST/OBC communities preparing for competitive exams, it makes one thing unmistakably clear: whether they can later claim a general seat will turn not just on their marks, but on whether they availed any concession or relaxation during the process, and on what the recruitment rules actually permit. Recruitment bodies such as the UPSC, SSC, state public service commissions, railways, police and university authorities now carry a sharper legal burden: they must read their own notifications and rule books with precision, identify what relaxations were granted, and only then finalise select lists or allow any “migration” of candidates from reserved to general categories. For general category aspirants, the ruling brings both clarity and a reality check“Merit” is no longer understood in isolation, but in the context of the specific rules, relaxations, and constitutional commitments underlying each selection. On the administrative side, employers and educational institutions will have to revisit their selection procedures, amend statutory and non‑statutory recruitment rules where necessary, and build the two‑step test relaxation used, plus what the rules say, into their systems if they wish to avoid fresh rounds of litigation in the future.
The judgment has taken effect immediately from the date of its pronouncement, January 6, 2026. As a Supreme Court decision, it is binding on all courts and authorities across India under Article 141 of the Constitution, which means this clarified legal position must now be applied in every relevant recruitment and admission process unless Parliament or a state legislature alters the statutory framework, or the Supreme Court itself revisits and modifies the rule in a later case. Recruitment notifications issued after this ruling, as well as ongoing selection processes still at a stage where lists or appointments are not final, will have to be framed and interpreted in line with the Court’s two‑step test on relaxations and migration to the general category. Employers, public service commissions, universities and other institutions cannot simply treat this judgment as advisory; it operates as a controlling precedent, and their future policies, rule books, and notifications will be judged against it. In practice, this decision now forms part of the legal architecture that every recruitment authority must keep in mind before fixing criteria, granting relaxations, or deciding who can shift from a reserved slot to a general seat.
The Supreme Court’s verdict fires a precise shot into the heart of the long-running tug-of-war between merit and reservation. It sends a sharp message: genuine talent cannot be locked out of opportunity, yet the constitutional armour of disadvantaged groups cannot be quietly chipped away. By drawing a bright line between candidates who climbed with the help of relaxations and those who scaled the wall without them, the Court has attempted a delicate balance between equality and social justice. In doing so, it turns what was once a grey zone into a calibrated rule: same track, same rules, same race, different track, different consequences. For students, recruiters and policymakers, this ruling is less of a full stop and more of a rulebook for the next season of this constitutional drama, where cut-offs, quotas and the judge’s gavel will all have to move in rhythm, under the watchful eye of Articles 14, 15 and 16.
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