Discriminatory residency requirements for SC/ST candidates in recruitment processes violate constitutional equality provisions and should not prevent eligible candidates from accessing employment reservations.

JUDGMENT

Vibhu Bakhru, J. The common question that arises in these petitions is whether the petitioners, who belong to the reserved category (SC/ST), are ineligible to be appointed as the Court Attendant/Room Attendant (Group-C), under the reserved category, in the establishment of this Court on the ground that they are not ordinarily residents of Delhi.

2. The aforesaid question arises in the context of the selection process that was commenced by inviting online applications for the said posts by a notification dated 12.06.2017 (hereafter `the Notification').

3. In terms of the Notification, online applications were invited from Indian citizens for filling up the following posts and preparing a panel for future vacancies:

4. The essential qualifications, as stipulated in the Notification, to be eligible for applying to the said posts are reproduced below:

"Essential Qualification:

Matriculation pass or equivalent from a recognized Board or Industrial Training Institute Pass Certificate from a recognized Institute.

Age:

Age should not be below 18 years and over 27 years as on 01.01.20:17 (i.e. he/she must have been born not earlier than 02.01.1990 and not later than 01.01.1999), The upper age limit for members of Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes shall be 32 years and for Other Backward Classes 30 years. The upper age limit for persons with disability, whose one leg or both legs are affected and have a minimum of 40% of physical defect or deformity, shall be relaxable by 10 years (13 years for OBC & 15 years for SC/ST). For Ex-servicemen, there is a relaxation of 3 years for Unreserved/General candidates, 6 years for OBC and 8 years for SC/ST after deduction of the military service rendered from the actual age as on 01.01.2017 subject to maximum age of 50 years. There shall be no upper age limit for persons serving in this Court and the Courts subordinate to it. The relaxation in upper age limit will not be applicable to the candidates who are working in other Govt. Departments/Public Sector Undertakings etc.

5. The Notification also specified for Reservation and provided as under:

"Reservation:

Consistent with maintenance of efficiency of Administration and subject to availability, 15 per cent posts for Scheduled Castes, 7.5 per cent posts for Scheduled Tribes, 27 per cent for Other Backward Classes shall be reserved. Reservation shall also be available to Persons with Disability(40% and above) and Ex-servicemen in accordance with the Rules, Orders and Notifications issued from time to time by the Government of India."

6. The eligible candidates were required to appear for a written test based on the pattern of `Multiple-Choice Question', which carried a weightage of 100 (hundred) marks. Those candidates, who qualified the written test, were required to appear for an interview subject to the condition that the number of candidates shortlisted for the interview would not be more than five times the total number of vacancies available in each category. The final merit list of the successful candidates was required to be prepared on the basis of aggregate of their performance in the written tests and int