In the nation, candidates are selected for government positions and other competitive exams based on these standards.
The Supreme Court rendered a decision against the Uttar Pradesh government in the case of ‘’Saurva Yadav vs. the State of Uttar Pradesh’’ in January 2021. It has clarified the legal stance on how vertical and horizontal reservations interact. Vertical and horizontal reservations have different aspects.
• Vertical reservation is the term used to describe reservation for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes. Each of the legally defined groups is subject to it independently. The Indian Constitution's Article 16(A) mentions this.
• It alludes to the equitable opportunities given to other beneficiary groups that transcend vertical divisions, such as women, veterans, members of the LGBTQ community, and people with disabilities. The Indian Constitution's Article 15(3) applies to it.
1. Where a vertical reservation is made in favor of a Backward Class under Article 16(4), the candidates belonging to such Backward Class, may compete for non-reserved posts, if they are appointed to the non-reserved posts on their own merit, their number will not be counted against the quota reserved for the respective Backward Class.
2. Therefore, it cannot be argued that the reservation quota for SCs has been met if the number of SC candidates who, on the basis of their own merit, are chosen to fill open competition positions equals or even exceeds the proportion of posts allocated for SC candidates.
3. In addition to those chosen through the open competition category, the complete reservation quota will be preserved and available.
4. But for horizontal reservations, the aforementioned rule that applies to vertical reservations will not hold true, where the social reservation for Scheduled Castes includes a separate reservation for women.
5. The right approach is to first fill the Scheduled Castes quota in the order of merit, and then determine how many of those individuals fall within the specific reserve category of "Scheduled Caste women."
6. There is no need for further selection for the special reserve quota if the proportion of women on such a list is equal to or higher than the proportion of the special reservation quota.
7. Only then will it be necessary to remove the necessary number of candidates from the bottom of the list for Scheduled Castes in order to fill the position with Scheduled Caste Women.
8. In this way, horizontal reservation and vertical reservation are dissimilar. Women who are chosen on the basis of merit within the vertical reserve quota will therefore be deducted from the women's reservation.
• It is one of the biggest queries that relate to these two forms of reservations. If a woman is a member of the Scheduled Caste, for instance, will she receive the reservation percentage under the horizontal or vertical quota?
• The explanation is because the horizontal quota is never applied uniformly, rather, it is always applied specifically to each vertical group. For example, if a woman has a 50% horizontal quota, then 50% of the SC candidates chosen must be women.
This case dealt aroused from the way different classes of reservation were to be applied in the selection process to fill posts of constables in the state.
Rita Rani received 233.1908 points, while Sonam Tomar received 276.59 points. Both of them had submitted applications as OBC-Female and SC-Female, respectively. Female is a horizontal reserve category, whereas OBC and SC are vertical ones.
This presented a problem since, while a girl from the general category who scored 274.82 had qualified for the exam, these two candidates had not. Here, the reservation policy for the exam is called into doubt.
According to the court's decision, the person would be considered qualified and cannot be excluded from the horizontal quota in the general category if they are from an intersection of the vertical-horizontal reserved category and they obtained scores high enough to qualify without the vertical reservation.
This was done in response to the UP government's policy of limiting and containing candidates from the reserved category to certain categories.
If both vertical and horizontal quotas were to be imposed together, a high-scoring candidate who would normally qualify without one of the two reservations gets pushed off the list — then the total selection would contain candidates with lower scores.
On the other hand, the court discovered that the final selection would include more high-scoring applicants if a high-scoring contender was permitted to remove one category.
