Hon’ble Shri Narayan Shukla, J.—Heard Mr. Ashok Sinha, learned counsel for the petitioner and Mr. Yashovardhan, learned counsel for opposite party No. 2 as well as Mr. D.K.Singh, learned counsel for the opposite party No. 4.

2. Through the instant writ petition the petitioners have prayed for issuing a writ of mandamus directing the respondents to upgrade their candidatures to their higher preference treating 4 seats vacant in the University under the terms of Brochure issued by the opposite party No. 1, which governs the Common Law Admission Test. The relevant clause i.e. 13 of Brochure is extracted below :

“A candidate would not be allowed to go for a lower preference if a seat is vacant in the higher preference based on the principle of merit-cum preference.

No candidate shall be allowed to be admitted to a University of his/her lower choice if a seat, on the basis of his/her merit and preference is available at a University of his/her higher choice.

But the CLAT admission committee, before his/her admission, may upgrade a candidate to the University of his/her higher choice on the availability of the seat.”

3. The petitioners belong to unreserved category. The total seats for the programme of B.A, L.L.B.(Hons.) is fixed as 160. For the reserved category, the total seat is fixed as 80. In order to take admission the provisions of vertical and horizontal reservation have been made applicable. Out of total seats the vertical reservation has been provided to fill up the seats by the unreserved, Other Backward Class, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe categories, for which 80, 43, 34 and 03 seats, respectively are reserved. Simultaneously for the persons with disability and Dependents of Freedom Fighters, the horizontal reservation has also been made applicable i.e. 3% for the persons with disability and 2% for Dependents of Freedom Fighters.

4. By interpreting the law of reservation in light of the judgment pronounced by the Hon’ble Supreme Court the learned counsel for the petitioners submits that the horizontal reservation applies to the particular category and accordingly 3% reservation for the persons with disability should be calculated in unreserved category, against the total seats i.e. 80 therefor which comes out 2.4 in number and since it is less than 2.5, it should be rounded of 2 only and accordingly only 2 candidates belonging to the persons with disability should have been admitted, whereas in the present case by calculating 3% reservation for the persons with disability against total seats i.e. 160, 5 candidates of the said category have been admitted in unreserved category. It is further stated that it establishes that had only 2 candidates been admitted under the persons with disability quota, 3 more seats were available for admission from the merit list. Since the petitioners on the basis of merit are eligible for admission, definitely they would have been admitted against those seats.

5. In support of his contentions, he cited the decision rendered in the case of Indra Sawhney and Others v. Union of India and Others, 1992 SCC (L&S) Supp 1. Relevant paragraph 812 is extracted below :

“812. We are also of the opinion that this rule of 50% applies only to reservations in favour of backward classes made under Article 16(4). A little clarification is in order at this juncture: all reservations are not of the same nature. There are two types of reservations, which may, for the sake of convenience, be referred to as ‘’vertical reservations’ and ‘’horizontal reservations’. The reservations in favour of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other backward classes [under Article 16(4)] may be called vertical reservations whereas reservations in favour of physically handicapped [under clause (1) of article 16] can be referred to as horizontal reservations. Horizontal reservations cut across the vertical reservations-what is called interlocking reservations. To be more precise, suppose 3% of the vacancies are r