An EWS post cannot go to a candidate who never applied under that category
A Division Bench led by Chief Justice Manoj Kumar Gupta quashed a university selection and ordered the petitioner's appointment letter to issue within three weeks.
A university post earmarked for the economically weaker sections was recommended to a candidate who had never applied under that category, and the Uttarakhand High Court has set the selection aside. A Division Bench of Chief Justice Manoj Kumar Gupta and Justice Subhash Upadhyay held that the inclusion of that candidate for a post reserved for EWS was not proper and ran against the statutory framework of the 2019 Act, and directed the university to consider the petitioner for the post and issue his appointment letter within three weeks. The judgment was authored by Justice Subhash Upadhyay.
The post and the petition
The writ petition, W.P. (S/B) No. 83 of 2025, challenged the recommendations and proceedings of a selection committee dated 16 February 2024, by which the name of a rival candidate was forwarded for appointment as Assistant Professor (Statistics) under the EWS category, along with the minutes of the Board of Management that followed. The post was in the College of Forestry of Veer Chandra Singh Garhwali Uttarakhand University. The matter was reserved on 28 September 2026 and delivered on 6 October 2026.
Mr. Piyush Garg, senior counsel, assisted by Mr. Shakti Sourabh Purohit appeared for the petitioner; Mr. C. K. Sharma for the university; and Mr. C. D. Bahuguna, senior counsel, assisted by Mr. C. S. Dalakoti for the third respondent.
The reliefs sought show how narrowly the petition was framed. The petitioner asked for a writ in the nature of certiorari quashing the selection committee's recommendations and proceedings of 16 February 2024, by which the rival candidate's name was forwarded for appointment under the EWS category, and quashing the minutes of the meeting of the Board of Management that acted on them. He did not ask the court to re-score the candidates or to reopen the selection as a whole; his case was that one name should never have been on the list for this particular post.
The statute he relied on is the 2019 Act which provides reservation in appointments for the economically weaker sections, and the provision that mattered is the one dealing with what happens when such a reserved vacancy cannot be filled.
Two findings that decided it
The first was conceded. Counsel for the university fairly accepted that the post of Assistant Professor (Statistics) in the College of Forestry was to be filled under the EWS category, and the advertisement annexed to the writ petition bore that out. Against that, on the third respondent's own case, he had never applied under the EWS category. His inclusion for selection against a post earmarked for EWS was therefore not proper.
The second answered the university's fallback. Section 3(3) of the Act of 2019 provides that where in any recruitment year a vacancy reserved for EWS cannot be filled for want of a suitable candidate, that vacancy is not to be carried forward to the next year and is to be filled from a suitable candidate of the General Category. The third respondent's argument was that the petitioner had been found unsuitable, so a general category candidate could properly be considered against the reserved post.
The record did not support it. No minimum cut-off marks had been provided by the Selection Committee, so it could not be said that the petitioner failed to obtain the requisite marks or was found unsuitable. What had in fact happened was that the petitioner's candidature was considered against the third respondent's, and the third respondent was recommended because he scored more marks. That is not a case of non-availability of a suitable EWS candidate, and the Bench held the contention to be bereft of merit.
Taken together the two findings leave the university with no answer. The post was an EWS post, which it conceded. The man recommended for it had not applied in that category, which he conceded. And the route by which a general category candidate may lawfully occupy such a post — non-availability of a suitable reserved candidate in that recruitment year — was not open, because the committee had fixed no cut-off against which anyone could be declared unsuitable, and had in fact ranked the two candidates against each other.
Order
The Bench held that the selection and recommendation of the third respondent against the EWS category post was against the provisions of the Act of 2019 and illegal, and that the recommendation, being contrary to law, could not be sustained. It was accordingly quashed. The respondents were directed to consider the petitioner's candidature for appointment to the post of Assistant Professor (Statistics) in the College of Forestry under the EWS category and to issue an appointment letter in his favour within three weeks. The writ petition was disposed of and pending applications stood disposed of.