By the Court.—The special appeal has arisen from the judgment of a learned Single Judge dated 16 April 2015.

2. An advertisement was issued by the Electricity Service Commission (Commission) for recruitment on 2211 posts of Technician Grade-II (Trainee) Electrical. Of these posts, the posts reserved for OBC, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates were as follows:

(i) OBC – 597 posts;

(ii) Scheduled Castes – 464 posts; and

(iii) Scheduled Tribes – 44 posts.

Thus, out of 2211 posts that were advertised, 1105 were reserved. 1106 posts were unreserved and were to be filled up by open competition. The selection process comprised of a written test followed by an interview. The Commission released a list of candidates who were declared to be successful in the written examination on the basis of which candidates were to be called for an interview. The Commission called three times the number of candidates for interview from each category applying what is described as a ‘3x formula’. The petitioners who filed writ proceedings before the learned Single Judge were candidates belonging to the OBC category. Their grievance was that though the last candidate from the unreserved catego