JUDGMENT

1. A judgment and order dated 23rd January 2019 passed by the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal, Mumbai (hereafter "the Tribunal", for short) dismissing Original Application No. 1100 of 2012 is under challenge in this writ petition at the instance of the unsuccessful original applicant (hereafter "the petitioner" for short).

2. The petitioner is 'a woman' belonging to "Other Backward Class" (hereafter "OBC", for short) category. Her grievance is that though in the selection process for recruitment as "Jailor-Grade II" she secured quite a high score and resultantly was placed in the overall merit position higher than women candidates from the 'unreserved' or 'open' category, she has not been appointed; whereas, women candidates belonging to 'open' category (the respondents 2 to 7) have been appointed, though they scored lesser marks than the petitioner and thereby were lower in the order of merit than the petitioner.

3. On 18th February 2009, an advertisement was published to fill in vacancies on the post of "Jailor-Grade II". Number of vacancies advertised was 100, out of which 14 vacancies were reserved for the OBC category. Considering the total vacancies reserved for var