The Supreme Court has set aside a Madhya Pradesh High Court judgment refusing to allow meritorious SC, ST and OBC candidates to be accommodated in the general category pool.

A bench of Justices B.R. Gavai and K.V. Viswanathan passed the verdict while directing the state to grant admission to appellant Ramnaresh and six other medical students belonging to reserved categories in MBBS Unreserved Government Schools (UR-GS) quota seats in the 2024-25 academic session.

In the present case, although 77 seats were available for admission to government school (GS) category students for MBBS seats under the unreserved category, they were not allotted to SC, ST and OBC candidates despite them scoring well enough to merit admission to general seats.

The plea by seven aspirants for admission under the unreserved seats was declined by the state’s department of medical education on the ground that reserved category candidates cannot be admitted under the UR (unreserved) category even if they had scored higher marks.

The aggrieved students had challenged the state government’s decision in Madhya Pradesh High Court, which dismissed their plea, prompting them to approach the Supreme Court.

Allowing the appeal, Justice Gavai, who authored the judgment, cited several apex court rulings, including the judgment in “Saurav Yadav and Others vs State of Uttar Pradesh and Others” passed in 2021, which held that a candidate belonging to any of the vertical reservation categories who on the basis of his merit is entitled to be selected in the open or general category, will be selected against the general category and his selection will not be counted against the quota reserved for such vertical reservation categories.

Horizontal reservation provides equal opportunities to certain categories of people across all caste categories in employment and education. Vertical reservation refers to reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs.

Justice Gavai also referred to the nine-judge constitution bench judgment in the “Indra Sawhney and Others vs Union of India and Others” (1992) and “Tamannaben Ashokbhai Desai vs Shital Amrutlal Nishar” (2020) wherein it was observed that a meritorious reserved category candidate who is entitled to the general category of the said horizontal reservation on his own merit will have to be allotted a seat from the said general category of the horizontal reservation.

The apex court recalled the judgment in the Tamannaben Ashokbhai Desai case wherein it was observed by Justice Ravindra Bhat that “open category is open to all, and the only condition for a candidate to be shown in it is merit, regardless of whether reservation benefit of either type is available to her or him. The horizontal as well as the vertical reservation would not be seen as rigid ‘slots’, where a candidate’s merit, which otherwise entitles her or him to be shown in the open general category, is foreclosed”.

“In view of the settled position of law as laid down by this court in the case of Saurav Yadav (supra) and reiterated in the case of Sadhana Singh Dangi (supra), the methodology adopted by the respondents in compartmentalising the different categories in the horizontal reservation and restricting the migration of the meritorious reserved category candidates to the unreserved seats is totally unsustainable. In view of the law laid down by this court, the meritorious candidates belonging to SC/ST/OBC, who on their own merit, were entitled to be selected against the UR-GS quota, have been denied the seats against the open seats in the GS quota,” Justice Gavai said.

“The respondents are directed to admit the appellants herein in the next academic session i.e. 2024-25 for MBBS course against the seats reserved for UR-GS category,” he added.