Women’s Reservation: Uttarakhand Govt Will Approach Supreme Court

DEHRADUN | Updated: 26 August, 2022 12:21 pm IST
Uttarakhand High Court

Uttarakhand state government has decided to approach the Supreme Court after the Uttarakhand high court stayed the state government’s order providing 30 per cent reservation to domiciled women in state government jobs.

However, the officials from the state government said that the government is waiting for the order copy and will approach the apex court after studying it.

SN Babulkar, advocate general, Uttarakhand HC said, “We are yet to get the copy of the order. Once we get the copy of the order, we will study the order and take the next step accordingly.”

Earlier this week on Wednesday, the high court stayed the government order dated July 24, 2006, which provided a 30 per cent horizontal reservation to women with the domicile of Uttarakhand in the state government services.

Dr Kartikey Hari Gupta, counsel for the petitioner told The New Indian, “We have pleaded before the honourable court that the state government has no power to provide domicile-based reservations. The Constitution of India allows reservation on the basis of domicile only by an Act of Parliament. The state government order is in violation of Articles 14, 16, 19, 21 of the Constitution of India.”

The petitioners stated that they have scored more marks than the cut off provided for Uttarakhand women.

Interestingly, all the petitioners in the case are women, who in their petition stated that they are facing discrimination by the state of Uttarakhand, which failed them despite having more marks than Uttarakhand women.

 

All 16 petitioners appeared in the preliminary examination of the state provincial civil services (PCS) examination, which was conducted in April 2022.

The results were announced on May 26 in which these women, despite scoring more marks than Uttarakhand women, were declared failed or unqualified, which rendered them unable to appear in the Mains examination of the state services.

The cut-off marks for Uttarakhand women stood at 79.6910 and the petitioners scored more than this, with one even scoring 91.4096.

The petitioners stated that this ‘arbitrary sub-categorization within Unreserved Category Candidates’ is discrimination introduced by the state of Uttarakhand in violation of the Fundamental Rights to Equality, Life and Livelihood, Equality of Opportunity in Public Employment as enshrined under Articles 14, 16, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India.

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