The court held that the reservation process must integrate all qualifying evaluations to ensure equitable treatment for candidates from reserved and unreserved categories, as mandated by law.

JUDGMENT :

Attau Rahman Masoodi, J.

The bunch of appeals involve common questions of facts and law, therefore, they were heard together and are decided by a common judgement and order.

2. The aforementioned bunch of intra-Court appeals filed under Chapter VIII Rule 5 of the Rules of the Court is directed against the judgement and order dated 13.3.2023 passed by the learned Single Judge in Writ-A No. 17919 of 2021 and other connected writ petitions, whereby while disposing of all the writ petitions filed by the writ petitioners, learned Single Judge quashed the select list dated 1.6.2020 with certain directions.

3. The bunch of appeals has raised an important question of law as to whether the marks obtained from the open competition on the result of Assistant Teachers Recruitment Examination (for short 'ATRE') based on 2019 examination alone or the marks derived on the basis of the entire process i.e. ATRE-2019 coupled with other criteria of educational and training record would be decisive to serve the real object of Section 3 (6) of the Uttar Pradesh Public Services (Reservation for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes) Act, 1994 (for short ''Reservation Act, 1994'). The relevant provision for ready reference is extracted below :

''3. Reservation in favour of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes.-

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(6) If a person belonging to any of the categories mentioned in sub-section (1) gets selected on the basis of merit in an open competition with general candidates, he shall not be adjusted against the vacancies reserved for such category under sub-section (1)''

4. Learned Single Judge while deciding the bunch of writ petitions on the aforesaid issue, after considering the submissions and the position of law in its entity, has opined that the marks obtained in the open competition of ATRE-2019 has laid the just basis for implementing the Reservation Act, 1994 to compartmentalize the eligible candidates in their respective streams of vertical reservation and any further marks derived on the screening of other qualifications as per Rule 14 of the U.P. Basic Education (Teachers) Service Rules, 1981 (hereinafter referred as the ''Service Rules, 1981'') read with Appendix - I shall not alter the position for the purposes of migration from reserved category to an unreserved field, therefore, the vertical reservation once operated and implemented by the State at the stage of the result of the ATRE-2019, would bind all the eligible candidates in terms of the circular dated 7.1.2019. For the purposes of adjudication of the controversy at hand, we may take note of the facts, in brief, as under :

Facts:

5. The U.P. Basic Education Act, 1972 (hereinafter referred as the ''Basic Education Act, 1972'') was enacted to regulate and control the imparting of basic education in schools upto Class-VIII. Rule 19 of the Basic Education Act, 1972 empowers the State Government to make Rules for carrying out the purposes of the Act and Section 19(2)(a) and (c) of the Basic Education Act, 1972 empowers the State Government to make Rules relating to the recruitment and conditions of service of the persons appointed