Summary:
New Delhi, Oct 22 (PTI) The Supreme Court on Friday said that successful civil services aspirants have no right to be allocated a cadre of their choice or their home state, and also noted that before selection they opt to serve anywhere in the country “with eyes open” but later “scramble” for home cadre.
The historic judgement in the Mandal case was also cited by the apex court to observe that the candidate belonging to the SC/ST or OBC category, if found suitable by the Union Public Services Commission(UPSC) for selection on merits under general category, “shall be appointed against unreserved vacancies”.
The observation of the top court came on an appeal of the Central government against a verdict of the Kerala High Court which had asked it to grant home cadre Kerala to A Shainamol, a Muslim woman IAS officer who was posted in Himachal Pradesh.
A bench comprising Justices Hemant Gupta and V Ramasubramanian set aside the verdict of the High Court asking the Centre to grant Kerala cadre to the woman IAS officer.
The bench also held that if a candidate hailing from reserved Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), or Other Backward Class (OBC) category does not take benefit of quota and gets selected in the general category then later he or she cannot take recourse to reservation for getting cadre or place of appointment of choice.
“The allocation of cadre is not a matter of right.