April 28, 2026

Merit Needs Rules, Not Afterthoughts

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2026-01-08 13:57:50

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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

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The Supreme Court's recent ruling is constitutionally unassailable. When a reserved-category candidate clears the general cut-off, they cannot be excluded from open seats. Articles 14 and 16 do not permit that. The principle is settled, and rightly so.

But here's the problem: the Court has told us where we must arrive without explaining how the journey should work. And in competitive recruitment, the how matters as much as the where.

Public selection is not a single ranking exercise. It is a multi-stage process where a candidate's declared category determines age limits, fees, qualifying marks, attempt limits and shortlisting norms from day one. These distinctions are not decorative. They are the scaffolding on which the entire selection rests.

So when does migration happen? After prelims? After mains? After the interview? And what about the candidate who used age relaxation to sit for the examination in the first place - do they migrate with or without that advantage counting? The Supreme Court has not said. Recruiting authorities do not know. Candidates are left guessing.

This is not hypothetical confusion. It is real, and it is unfolding now.

Consider a simple scenario. Two candidates score 180 marks. One entered the process at age 28 under general rules. The other entered at age 33 using age relaxation available to OBC candidates. Both clear the cut-off. Who ranks higher on the final general merit list? Do we acknowledge the differential pathway or ignore it? The judgment offers no guidance.

Or take this case. An SC candidate applies, receives a five-mark relaxation at the preliminary stage, qualifies, and then scores high enough in the mains to exceed the general cut-off. Does that candidate migrate to the general list? If yes, does the preliminary concession become irrelevant? If no, is merit being denied? Either answer invites litigation.

The Constitution says merit cannot be denied. Fine. But merit has to be measured through a process - and that process must have rules everyone knows before the race begins. Right now, recruiting authorities are being asked to retrofit merit lists after the fact, harmonising pathways that were never designed to converge. That is not administration. It is litigation roulette.

And everyone loses. General-category candidates face seat counts that shrink unpredictably. Reserved-category candidates face endless list revisions, court cases and years of uncertainty that negate the very stability reservation was meant to provide. The only consistent winners are lawyers.

Merit already operates within quotas. Reserved categories have internal rankings, cut-offs and competition. A high-scoring SC candidate is not appointed without merit; they are often appointed earlier, with better seniority, ahead of lower scorers within their category. Reservation is not a merit-free zone. It is a merit framework that accounts for unequal starting points. Courts themselves have repeatedly warned that reservation cannot be turned into a cage.

None of this is a claim of double benefit. It is a plea for single, intelligible rules.

The answer, therefore, is not to reverse the Supreme Court. It is to operationalise its ruling properly.

Legislatures and recruiting authorities must lay down clear rules before examinations, not after. When does migration occur? What disclosures are mandatory? How are differential concessions reflected - or excluded - in final rankings? If a candidate used any statutory benefit, is that fact recorded, and if so, how? These are not abstract questions. They determine whether a recruitment system is trusted or perpetually contested.

Clarity would look like this: rules announced upfront; categories declared at application; migration protocols specified in the advertisement itself; transparent merit lists showing who competed under what conditions. Judicial review should remain available - but for arbitrariness, not for reconstructing recruitment models midway through the process.

The Constitution has drawn the boundary: merit cannot be fenced out by category. But within that boundary, discipline is essential. A process explained only after results are declared has already failed. Equality does not operate through abstract judgments alone. It takes shape in implemented systems that candidates can understand, navigate and trust.

The Supreme Court has reaffirmed a vital principle. Now someone needs to write the manual. Because at present, competitive selections are being run on constitutional poetry and administrative prayer. That is not sustainable, and it is not fair to anyone.

Rules do not undermine equality. They make it real.