Rajasthan High Court: Dismissing a petition, a division bench comprising of Amitava Roy, CJ and Vijay Bishnoi, J concluded that there should be no separate category of the physically handicapped persons for the purpose of reservation.
In the present case, a physically handicapped candidate who appeared for the preliminary examination of the Rajasthan Judicial Service was seeking to invoke extra-ordinary jurisdiction of the Court for violation of Rajasthan Judicial Service Rules, 2010, contending that there is an error in the decision of the examination committee in rejecting his representation, as the physically handicapped candidates construe to be a separate category independent of General/SC/ST/OBC categories under the Rules, and any omission thereof would be contravention of the Rules, professed advertisement, and Article 14 and 16 of the constitution. The Court relied on the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Indra Sawhney v. Union of India 1992 Suppl. (3) SCC 215 , where the Court clarified the concept of reservation and explained that suppose 3% of the vacancies are reserved in favour of physically handicapped persons, if he belongs to SC/ST/OBC/women category he will be placed in that quota, so that the percentage reservations in favour of that class remains the same. The Court held that law does not permit that there should be a separate category for physically handicapped persons for the purpose of reservation. The Court found that the petitioner’s representation has been rejected on merits by the examination committee, and suspended the challenge of the petitioner and opined that in this case the exercise of the power of judicial review is not warranted. The results of the preliminary examination cannot be faulted and the insistence for the cut-off marks for this category of candidates is ex-facie absurd and preposterous, the Court held. Vikram Singh Chouhan v. State of Rajasthan, D.B. Civil Writ Petition No.3115 of 2014, decided on May 16, 2014.
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