Shivani Thakur
Published on: April 28, 2022 at 23:44 IST
The Rajasthan High Court has dismissed a widow’s challenge to the validity of the category-wise merit list prepared after preliminary examinations for recruitment to the Post of Civil Judge (Junior Division) and Judicial Magistrate in the Rajasthan Judicial Services.
While dismissing the Plea the Court said that “Challenge to the reservation policy and prescription as provided under the advertisement cannot be permitted to be challenged at the instance of unsuccessful candidates after the candidate has been declared unsuccessful.”
The Court observed that no horizontal reservation was provided for widows in the Scheduled Tribes category in respect of vacancies of the year 2020 and 2021.
The Court added that if not satisfied with this Reservation Policy, was required to challenge the rule or the advertisement in the beginning of the process of selection.
The Court noted that the Petitioner participated in the examination and after declaration of the results of the preliminary examination, is precluded from challenging the selection process insofar as Policy and Prescription of Reservation is concerned.
The Court observed that the Rule of Migration of Reserved Category candidate from his/her own category to General Category to be placed in the merit list would be applicable while preparing final merit list and not when the exercise of shortlisting of candidate’s category wise is done at the stage of screening by way of Preliminary Examinations, as has been done in the present Case.