IMPORTANT POINT
Reservation – Merit must be given precedence and if candidates, who belong to SCs, STs and OBCs have secured higher marks or are more meritorious, they must be considered against seats meant for unreserved candidates.

JUDGMENT :

M.R. SHAH, J.

1. Feeling aggrieved and dissatisfied with the impugned judgment and order dated 04.08.2014 passed by the High Court of Rajasthan at Jodhpur in DBCWP No. 14714/2013, by which the High Court has dismissed the said writ petition preferred by the appellants herein-Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (hereinafter referred to as “BSNL”) and has confirmed the judgment and order passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Jodhpur Bench, Jodhpur (hereinafter referred to as the “Tribunal”) in O.A. No. 159 of 2009 by which the learned Tribunal allowed the said application preferred by the respondent No. 1 herein-original applicant and directed the appellant herein-BSNL to consider his candidature if sufficient vacancies exist for placement of the candidates of Other Backward Class and his candidature shall be considered against the present or future vacancies on the OBC category after determining the vacancies as per rules, the appellant-BSNL has preferred the present appeal.

2. The facts leading to the present appeal in nutshell are as under:

2.1 That the private respondent No. 1 herein-original applicant applied for the post of Telecom Technical Assistants (TTAs) in pursuance to the notification dated 06.10.2008 issued by BSNL for filling up of TTA posts. The appointment was to be made by way of direct recruitment by open competitive examination in the Rajasthan Telecom Circle. The said advertisement further provided that the unit of recruitment shall be the respective Secondary Switching Area (SSA). The dispute in the present case is relating to the Ajmer SSA. In the Ajmer SSA, the vacancies were as follows:

The recruitment was to be made by conducting a competitive examination of eligible candidates in an objective type paper of 200 marks. Clause 13 of the advertisement provided that:

(i) The minimum Qualifying marks in the paper would be 40% for the candidates of unreserved category candidate.

(ii) 33% for candidates of reserved category.

It so happened that in the exam which was conducted no person from general category candidate got more than 40% marks. However, four candidates from OBC category obtained more than 33% marks. The marks obtained by four OBC category candidates are as under:

OBC selected candidates

The original applicant-respondent No. 1 herein, who got 68.25 marks was placed at Waiting List No. 1 in the OBC category.

2.2 On 01.06.2009, BSNL issued a circular/letter to all heads of telecom circles, inter-alia, stating that there has been poor pass percentage of candidates in the TTA examination and number of vacancies had remained unfilled. There was acute shortage of manpower and hence it was decided to relax the qualifying marks by 10% for all candidates. Accordingly, the qualifying marks were re-fixed at 30% for general category and 23% for reserved category. Clauses (iii) and (v) of the said letter provides as follows:

(iii) Successful candidates, qualifying through normal standards in aggregate will rank en-block senior to those qualifying through relaxed standard in the merit list. However, the provisions of the Recruitment Rules will determine their inter-se seniority in the cadre.

(v) The Circles who have already announced the result but have not got adequate number of successful candidates, may further extend the merit/waiting list as per above instructions.

2.3 After relaxation of minimum marks with 30% of general category candidates, the following five candidates in general category became eligible for appointmen