Hon’ble Sudhir Agarwal, J.—The cardinal question in all these special appeals revolves around the issue of reservation of posts for Other Backward Class, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women candidates and Sportsmen. Although the learned counsels for the parties have advanced submissions from different angles, raising different issues but with the common objective to get more vacancies available for general candidates, yet the submissions are mostly overlapping and the reference to case law being common, we have heard all these appeals together and are deciding by this common judgment.

2. In all these appeals except Special Appeal No. 592 of 2006, 1285 of 2002 and 910 of 2005, the petitioner-appellants have assailed the judgment dated 22nd May, 2002 of Hon’ble Single Judge (Hon’ble Ashok Bhusan, J.) to the extent the Writ Petition Nos. 25328 of 2001, 26847 of 2001, 36411 of 2001, 28836 of 2001, 26177 of 2001, 34039 of 2001, 4630 of 2001, 32763 of 2001, 27849 of 2001, 27060 of 2001, 29069 of 2001 and 47528 of 2002 have been dismissed whereby the petitioner appellants were seeking a mandamus directing the respondents to sent them for training to the post of Sub-Inspect