IMPORTANT POINT
The main legal point established in the judgment is the importance of specifying the type of horizontal reservation and the number of seats reserved for each category to avoid complications and prejudice in the selection process for reserved and unreserved vacancies.

JUDGMENT :

Prasenjit Biswas, J.

The instant writ petition is filed challenging the impugned order dated 05.10.2021 in O.A. No. 350/1294/ 2019 passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Kolkata Branch whereby and whereunder the appellant authorities are directed to consider the grievance of the respondent to adjust him suitably against the Fitter Auto post against an UR vacancy on the basis of his rank.

2. The background facts are that the Ordnance Factory, Medak, Yeddumailaram, Telangana, a Defence Production Unit under the Department of Defence production, Ministry of Defence, Government of India floated an advertisement being no. 10201/11/0209/1718 in the month of January 2017 for filling up vacancies/posts of Semi-Skilled Grade Industrial Employees (IES), Group C in various ordnance factories located all over India.

3. Note 2 of the said notification says as follows :

‘Ex-servicemen and physically handicapped candidates may apply against posts even if the posts are not reserved/earmarked for them. However, only age relaxation and fee exemption will be granted and they will be considered without horizontal reservations subject to the post being identified for PH’.

4. Two unreserved vacancies were advertised for the post of Fitter Auto and both the said vacancies were filled up by the Ex-Servicemen for whom 13 vacancies were already kept aside. Those two vacancies were filled up with ex-servicemen candidates only by applying horizontal reservation method and hence the respondent who secured more marks than the selected candidates have been left out. Being aggrieved by and dissatisfied with this selection process adopted by the appellant authority respondent knocked the door of the Tribunal and the Tribunal passed the impugned order.

5. Learned counsel appearing for the petitioners assailed before us that the Tribunal failed to appreciate the contentions put forth by the petitioners in its proper perspective. So, the Tribunal wrongly passed the order dated 05.10.2021 by directing authorities to consider the grievance of the respondent and to adjust him suitably against the Fitter Auto Post against unreserved vacancy on the basis of his rank and in terms of his own merit.

6. Learned Counsel further submitted that the Tribunal has erroneously came to conclusion that 13 vacancies have already been kept aside for ex-servicemen in the notification because the vacancies notified for Ordnance Factory, Medak includes 04 posts reserved for PH and 13 posts reserved for ex-servicemen against overall vacancies. The percentage of reservation for ex-servicemen quota had to be worked out on the total number of posts advertised and the horizontal reservation applied in overall and not category wise reservation.

7. It is further submitted on behalf of the petitioners that the ex-servicemen were selected under the reservation provided for them and accordingly as per final select list for the post of Fitter Auto trade of Ordnance Factory Medak, 2 ex-servicemen were selected against the 2 unreserved vacancies of this trade. The principal of horizontal reservation and age relaxation criteria as per extent rules and the ibid advertisement were justifiably applied to select these two ex-servicemen.

8. Learned counsel further submitted that the principle of horizontal reservation was applied while filling the vacancies for all the trades for which combined vacancies for PH and ex-servicemen were advertised and total 13 vacancies of ex-servicemen and 04 PH category were filled up against different trades.

9. Per contra learned Counsel for the respondent submitted before us inter alia that the respondent scored 89 and his rank was one and on the other hand the selected ex-servicemen scored 56 and 50 points respectively. This respondent who scored highest has been wrongly left out to accommodate the one less meritorious non-PH ex-servicemen.

10. It is further submitted by the learned counsel that although respondent did well in the examination and se