Centre Defends Disqualification of High-Scoring OBC Candidate in Supreme Court
In a pivotal legal stance defining the boundaries of affirmative action and competitive recruitment, the Central Government has informed the Supreme Court of India that Other Backward Class (OBC) candidates who avail age relaxation benefits at the threshold of an examination are strictly barred from migrating to unreserved general merit vacancies, regardless of whether they secure higher marks than qualifying general category candidates. The clarification arose during proceedings challenging verdicts delivered by the High Court of Tripura, which had directed the administration to consider an OBC candidate for appointment after he secured substantially higher marks than a selected general candidate in the 2018 recruitment drive for Constable (General Duty) and Rifleman positions across Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the Secretariat Security Force (SSF), and the Assam Rifles. The Centre's stand underscores a strict interpretation of statutory service rules, reaffirming that availing relaxation in eligibility criteria permanently binds an applicant to their designated quota.
The Tripura Recruitment Dispute: How 55.1 Marks Fell Short While 46.26 Secured Selection
The legal dispute traces its origins to the examination journey of Jayanta Debnath, an OBC candidate from Tripura who exceeded the standard upper age threshold prescribed for general unreserved applicants. Utilizing the statutory age relaxation granted to reserved categories under government recruitment rules, Debnath qualified to appear in the multi-agency 2018 Constable recruitment examination. However, when the final results were declared, an anomalous score disparity surfaced due to quota-specific vacancy distribution: the cutoff benchmark for OBC candidates escalated to 60 marks owing to a limited pool of reserved vacancies, whereas the general unreserved cutoff settled considerably lower. Consequently, Debnath was eliminated despite achieving a competitive score of 55.1 marks, even as a general category candidate from Tripura, Sagar Debnath, successfully secured an appointment with a score of 46.26 marks, bringing the procedural friction between age-based eligibility concessions and merit-based category migration into sharp focus.
High Court Mandate Overturned? Centre's Arguments Before Supreme Court Bench
Aggrieved by his exclusion, Jayanta Debnath had approached the Tripura High Court, where both a single-judge bench and subsequently a division bench ruled in his favor, mandating that his superior merit entitled him to consideration for the post of constable. Contesting the judicial orders, the Central Government filed a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court. Presenting arguments before a high-profile bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi, and Justice V. Mohana, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Aishwarya Bhati argued that established service jurisprudence and clear recruitment guidelines prohibit candidates from crossing over to the open general merit category once they have utilized caste-specific concessions to cross the basic eligibility threshold. The law officer maintained that allowing candidates who enter the examination through age exemptions to compete for open category seats unfairly compromises the level playing field designed for unreserved candidates who complied with the standard age barriers.
