Horizontal reservations for persons with disabilities allow candidates to be assessed based on their qualifications, irrespective of vertical category cut-offs.

ORDER

1 The petitioner is a blind candidate. The Rajasthan High Court in advertisement No 783 of 2024 dated 9 April 2024, announced the commencement of the recruitment process for direct recruitment to the cadre of Civil Judge 2024. Nine vacancies were reserved for Persons with Benchmark Disabilities, of which two are for the persons pertaining to blind and low vision category. The advertisement also stated that the number of candidates to be admitted to the interview shall be, as far as practicable, three times the total number of vacancies category-wise. The advertisement which was issued on 9 April 2024, contains clause 23 pertaining to the scheme and syllabus of the examination which is reproduced below:

“23. Scheme & Syllabus of Examination-

(i) The competitive examination for the recruitment to the post of Civil Judge shall be conducted in two stages i.e. Preliminary Examination and Main Examination. The marks obtained in the Preliminary Examination by the candidate who are declared qualified for admission to the Main Examination will not be counted for determining final merit.

(ii) The number of candidate to be admitted to the Main Examination will be fifteen times the total number of vacancies (category-wise) but in the said range all those candidates who secure the same percentage of marks on the last cut-off will be admitted to the Main Examination.

Note

(a) To qualify for Main Examination, the candidates of SC/ST category and Persons with Benchmark Disability shall have to secure minimum 40% marks in the Preliminary Examination.

(b) To qualify for Main Examination, the candidates of all other categories shall have to secure 45% minimum marks in the Preliminary Examination.

(iii) The number of candidates to be admitted to the interview shall be, as far as practicable, three times the total number of vacancies category-wise:

Provided that to qualify for Interview, a candidate shall have to secure a minimum of 35% marks in each of the Law Papers and 40% marks in aggregate in the Main Examination,

Provided further that a candidate belonging to Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe category and Persons with Benchmark Disability shall be deemed to be eligible for interview, if he has obtained minimum of 30% marks in each of the Law Papers and 35% marks in the aggregate in the Main Examination.”

2 Rule 10 of the Rajasthan Judicial Services Rules 2010 provides for reservation of vacancies for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, More Backward Classes, Economically Weaker Sections, Persons with Disabilities and Women candidates. Rule 10(4) is in the following terms:

“Reservation of vacancies for Persons with benchmark disabilities in the recruitment to the service shall be in accordance with the rules of the State issued from time to time in this behalf.”

3 Rule 10(4), inter alia, makes a reference to the rules of the State issued from time to time. The State of Rajasthan has issued a notification dated 23 January 2019, prescribing rules called the Rajasthan Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules 2018 under Section 101 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016.

4 Rule 5(1) of the Rules of 2018 prescribes for reservation of vacancies in the following terms:

“In every establishment 4% percent of the vacancies of direct recruitment in the cadre shall be reserved for persons or class of persons with benchmark disabilities according to the section 34 of the Act. In the posts identified for each disability by the Government of India under section 33 and such reservation shall be as treated as horizontal reservation and the vacancies for persons with benchmark disabilities shall be maintained as a separate class:

Provided that where the nomenclature of any post in the State Government is different from the post in Government of India or any post in the State Government does not exist in any department of the Government of India, the matter shall be referred to the Committee constituted under rule 6 for identifi