JUDGMENT

Talwant Singh, J. - In all these writ petitions, the petitioners have challenged the order of learned Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) dated 13th January, 2020 in a batch of Original Applications (OAs) filed by candidates belonging to the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) of society attempting the Civil Services Examination-2019 (CSE-2019). The UPSC and Union of India, who are the petitioners in W.P.(C) No.1158/2020 and W.P.(C) No.4623/2020 respectively,were the respondents before the CAT; and the respondents in these two writ petitions as well as the petitioners in the other writ petitions bearing W.P.(C) Nos.701/2020, 1195/2020 and 1356/2020 were the original applicants before the CAT.

2. Broadly speaking, the present matters relate to theCSE-2019 and the applicants before CAT were the candidates for the said examination belonging to EWS category. It is to be noticed here that for the first time in the history of India, reservation for the EWS category was provided in the CSE examination, on the basis of the Constitution (103rd) Amendment. The provision for reservation was notified vide OM dated 31st January, 2019 and the notification for holding CSE-2019 was issued