New Delhi, Oct 22 : A successful civil services aspirant has no right to be allocated a cadre or place of appointment of his choice as a candidate for the All India service he opts for serving anywhere in the country with “eyes wide open,” the Supreme Court Friday said.
The historic judgement in the Mandal case was also referred to by the apex court to observe that the candidate belonging to the SC/ST or OBC if found suitable by the UPSC for selection on merits under general category, “shall be appointed against unreserved vacancies”.
The observation of the top court came on the 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) the category does not take benefit of quota and gets selected in the general category then later he or she cannot take recourse of reservation for getting cadre or place of appointment of choice.
“The allocation of cadre is not a matter of right. It was held that a selected candidate has a right to be considered for appointment to the IAS but he has no such right to be allocated to a cadre of his choice or his home state. As stated above, allotment of cadre is an incidence of service.