UPSC candidates have no right to cadre of choice: Supreme Court

The top court pointed out that in the 1995 case of Union of India and Ors v. Rajiv Yadav, IAS and Ors, a three-judge bench had laid down that allotment of cadre is not a matter of right. The court had said that “a selected candidate had a right to consider the appointment of the IAS but he had no such right to be allocated to cadre of his choice or to his home state. Allocation of cadre was an incidence of service.”

Allowing the Centre’s appeal challenging the HC decision of February 29, 2017, the bench said Shainamol “as a candidate for All-India Service…has opted to serve anywhere in the country”. It said that “once an applicant gets selected to service, the scramble for home cadre starts”.

Rejecting arguments that her home state — Kerala — was not consulted before allocating her Himachal cadre, the court said the State has “no discretion of allocation of a cadre at its whims and fancies”, and “therefore, the Tribunal or the High Court should have refrained from interfering with allocation of cadre on the argument of alleged violation of the allocation circular”.

The verdict dealt with the question whether consultation in respect of allocation of cadre is required to be done with the State from which the candidate belongs or with the State to which the candidate is being allocated.

It pointed out that the “entire basis” of Shainamol’s “claim is that there was no consultation with the State of Kerala” and that the “argument is however untenable”.

The court said, “The applicant was allocated to the State of Himachal Pradesh and there was a consent duly given by the Himachal Pradesh for her allocation to that State. In fact, no consultation was required to be carried out in respect of the applicant with Kerala. Therefore, mandate…of the Cadre Rules is satisfied when consultation was made with the State to which allocation was made”, it said.

The SC said that the reasoning given by HC that there was cadre deficiency, therefore, the applicant was entitled to be allocated is “strange”, and “bereft of any merit”.

It said that the “consistent view of this court has been that even if the name of the candidate appears in the merit list, such candidate has no right to claim appointment”.

Shainamol had initially moved the Ernakulam bench of Central Administrative Tribunal which centre Union to allot and accommodate her applicant against the outsider OBC vacancy in the Maharashtra cadre.

The SC however found that though she was an OBC candidate, she had came on general merit without resorting to the relaxed standard for OBC candidates and said that an OBC candidate, who has not availed relaxation or concession, had to be treated as general category candidate.