The Supreme Court ruled that meritorious SC/ST, OBC, and EWS candidates are eligible to be considered under the horizontal quota. This decision came despite the Madhya Pradesh government’s stance that shifting vertical reservation categories like SC/ST/OBC/EWS to the horizontal UR-GS category was not feasible.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court ruled that individuals from SC/ST, OBC, or EWS categories are eligible for consideration in horizontal quota seats if their scores exceed the cut-off marks set for general category candidates.
A bench comprising Justices B.R. Gavai and K.V. Viswanathan instructed the Madhya Pradesh government’s Department of Medical Education to grant admission to seven candidates from the SC, OBC, and EWS categories into the MBBS Unreserved Government Schools (UR-GS) quota for the 2024-25 academic session.
The court stated,
“The approach taken by the respondents to compartmentalize different categories within horizontal reservation and limit the migration of meritorious reserved category candidates to unreserved seats is entirely unsustainable.”
The appellants argued that,
“In the UR-GS seats, individuals with significantly lower merit, some scoring as low as 214 and 150 marks, were granted admission, while the appellants, who are considerably more meritorious, were denied admission.”
They further asserted that due to the “erroneous” application of the policy, 77 seats classified as UR-GS not filled from the GS quota and had to be allocated to the open pool of candidates.
The appellants cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in Saurav Yadav and Others v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Others (2021), arguing that even under horizontal reservation, candidates from reserved categories such as SC/ST/OBC, if eligible based on their own merit, should be admitted under the GS quota (UR seats).
They further argued that meritorious students from reserved categories who have attended government schools should be allocated MBBS seats under the unreserved category government school quota before these seats are made available to the open category.
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The Madhya Pradesh government contended that it was not feasible to shift candidates from vertical reservation categories like SC/ST/OBC/EWS to the horizontal UR-GS category.
However, the bench clarified that,
“It is well established that a candidate from any vertical reservation category, who qualifies for selection in the open or general category based on merit, should be selected under the general category, and this selection should not be counted against the reserved quota for vertical categories.”
The bench emphasized that “this principle applies to horizontal reservation as well,” noting that meritorious SC/ST/OBC candidates, who were eligible for selection under the UR-GS quota based on their own merit, wrongfully denied these seats.
Consequently, the court overturned the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s judgment, which had dismissed writ petitions challenging the Department of Medical Education’s decision not to allocate MBBS Unreserved (UR) Category Government School (GS) quota seats to meritorious reserved candidates who had graduated from government schools.
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