Upsc For Ais And Central Services v. Union Of India, Represented Through Its Secretary

Judgment

1. Union Of India, Represented Through Its Secretary, Ministry Of Personnel, Public Grievances And Pensions, Department Of Personnel And Training, North Block, New Delhi - 110001.

Shri Kanishak Kataria S/o Shri S.m. Kataria, R/o House No. B2/506, Chitrakoot Nagar, Jaipur- 302021 (Raj.) ----Respondents For Petitioner(s) : Mr. R. N. Mathur, Sr.Adv. with For Respondent(s) Mr. Amit Mathur : Mr. R. D. Rastogi, ASG Mr. Siya Ram Sharma, Mr. Anand Sharma HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE INDERJEET SINGH HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE BHUWAN GOYAL 20/01/2025 Order The present petition has been filed by the petitioner challenging the order dated 11.10.2021 passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Jaipur Bench whereby the original application No.291/00223/2019 filed on behalf of the petitioner was dismissed. The petitioner appeared in Civil Services Examination-2018 and name of the petitioner appeared at Serial No.98 and she was selected in the IRS Cadre as per her preference and choice. [2025:RJ-JP:2740-DB] (2 of 6) [CW-13054/2021] Learned Tribunal while dismissing the original application filed on behalf of the petitioner in Para Nos.7, 8 and 9, held as under:- “We have gone through the pleadings, heard the arguments at length and also gone through the entire compendium of rulings produced by the learned counsel for the applicant. We are unable to find anything that supports the applicant’s case. In the present case, the respondent No.2 secured the highest rank and was allotted IAS. He belongs to Rajasthan and has asked for Rajasthan cadre, his home state, as his first preference. There is no vacancy of IAS in the Rajasthan Cadre for the insiders in the unreserved candidates. However, there is one vacancy for the insiders in the reserved category. The paragraph 9 of the guidelines, which the applicant has challenged as illegal, arbitrary or unreasonable, comes to his rescue here. He is allotted Rajasthan Cadre since he is an insider, belongs to the SC and is much higher ranked than any other reserve candidate (in fact, even higher than anyone else) who might have put a claim above that of the respondent No.2. The paragraph 9 of the OM is reproduced here: “9. A reserved category candidate selected on general merit standards shall be eligible for allocation against the available unreserved vacancy as per his merit and preference. But if he cannot be allocated against such vacancy, for he is lower in rank as compared with other general category candidates, he shall be considered for allocation as per his merit and preference against the available vacancy of his category.” [2025:RJ-JP:2740-DB] (3 of 6) [CW-13054/2021]

8. It is very clear from this rule that it is intended to avoid any reserve category candidate from suffering any disadvantage in cadre allocation just because he secured a higher rank. If this rule did not provide for such consideration of his preferences, it would lead to an absurdity of a lower ranked candidate of a reserved category getting his preferred cadre while the higher ranked person in the same category gets thrown out. We do not find anything arbitrary or unjust in this rule. The i/c for the applicant argues that a person cannot be given double benefit of his rank. It should be either for the allotment of service or for the allotment of cadre. We fail to understand the logic behind this reasoning other than that of the selfish interest of the applicant that she might, hypothetically speaking, be the beneficiary if this strange logic (or rather the lack of it) was accepted. The applicant has not asked for any prayer for herself in the Original Application and has only sought for cancellation of cadre allocation for the respondent No.2. Her alternate prayer for treating the respondent No.2 as reserve category, also does not expressly reveal what she wants, through that, for herself. We cannot grant any prayers of this type in which the applicant does not even reveal her locus standi and we have to gather it or guess it from asking during the stage of arguments. We are sorry to state that if the intention of the applicant is to get, at 98th rank, a benefit at the cost of denial of a legitimate benefit to a higher ranker, just because the higher rank (according to her) has already received a benefit by way of allotment of a better service, we cannot accede to such requests. The argument of the learned counsel for the applicant that the rank [2025:RJ-JP:2740-DB] (4 of 6) [CW-13054/2021] should not be considered in the allocation of cadres does not find any support from any rule or logic. It is an objective criteria and it is most logical to give higher weightage to the preferences given by a person who stands higher in merit. Denying this benefit to a reserve category person only because he has been considered as unreserved while counting the number of persons to be filled for any service against any quota, would not only be unreasonable, but would also go against the constitutional mandate of positive discrimination in favour of the weaker classes.

9. We have also gone through all the rulings contained in the compendium produced by the learned counsel for the applicant and we do not find even a single one that may apply on the facts of this case. In Avinash Mohanty’s Case (supra), the Hon’ble Apex Court found the cadre allocation wrong on the basis of mistaken calculation of vacancies relating to certain categories. The State of Tamilnadu Vs. K Shobhana Etc. case (supra) deals with the issue of horizontal Vs. vertical reservations in filing of backlog vacancies. It cannot be applied to the facts of this case even by very stretched and analogous considerations. In Union of India Vs. Mhathung Kithan and Ors. case, the issue was that of carrying forward past insider vacancies, an issue entirely unrelated to the present case. In Union of India Vs. Anu Kumari’ case, the Hon’ble Supreme Court found no error in not allowing the respondent therein any preference since she had not filled her preference in time. In Himanshu Kumar Verma Vs. Union of India, the Hon’ble High Court of Delhi directed the cadre allocations to be freshly made according to merit while ignoring certain misleading entries in [2025:RJ-JP:2740-DB] (5 of 6) [CW-13054/2021] filling the forms of preferences. Thus we do not find any decision, which can be applied on the facts of the present case even by way of an analogy. These decisions can be cited to support justification of intervention by the Courts in matters of cadre allocation when vacancies are wrongly determined or where there is a general error in determining preferences. Some of these decisions also make it clear, as very strongly argued by the learned counsel for the applicant, that cadre allocation is not a matter of right. It certainly is not and that applies equally, both to the applicant and the respondent No.2. Amongst the two, the respondent No.2 certainly has a better claim than the applicant because of his higher standing in the merit, and this higher standing cannot become his disadvantage, especially because of the clear provision under paragraph 9 of the guidelines, which we find apparently very reasonable and correct.” Learned Senior Counsel appearing on behalf of the petitioner submitted that the respondent No.2 has wrongly been given the Rajasthan Cadre treating in SC Category candidate whereas he was at Sr.No.1. Per contra, learned counsel for the respondents submits that the petitioner has no locus standi to file the original application challenging the allotment of Rajasthan Cadre of respondent No.2 in SC Category as respondent No.2 belongs to different cadre i.e. IAS and the petitioner belongs to the Cadre of IRS. We have gone through the judgment passed by the learned Tribunal and in our considered view, no illegality has been committed by the learned Tribunal while dismissing the original [2025:RJ-JP:2740-DB] (6 of 6) [CW-13054/2021] application as the petitioner was allotted the Cadre of IRS as she was at Serial No.98 in the merit list wherein respondent No.2 was at No.1 in the merit list in all over India. Hence, the present petition is dismissed. (BHUWAN GOYAL),J (INDERJEET SINGH),J Seema/141