Recently, in the matter of Suresh Kumar Lalit Kumar Patel and Others v. State of Gujarat and Others, the Supreme Court of India held that reducing the cut-off marks for the purpose of providing employment to a particular category would be an affront to Article 14 of the Constitution of India. 

The bench was held by Justices Sanjiv Khanna and MM Sundresh, who disapproved the decision of a departmental selection committee to reduce the qualifying marks for the post of Supervisor Instructor Class III after the publication of results.

During the hearing, the Counsel member informed the Court that this was done to facilitate the appointment of candidates belonging to a special category comprising women, persons with disabilities and former members of the armed forces.

Later, the Court observed that the decision to reduce the cut-off, in this case, was not based on any objective criteria or the suitability of the candidate, but for extraneous reasons, "to accommodate otherwise ineligible candidates."

The Court said the marks could not be reduced without "a sound reason that the reduced marks also would be sufficient to be suitable for that post."

In the said matter the decision of the Gujarat government was challenged in which government to relax the cut-off marks for candidates belonging to a special category comprising of women, persons with disabilities, and ex-servicemen when it came to recruitment for the post of Supervisor Instructor. Pertinently, this was done after the results were published.

The state government informed that they decided to treat it as a form of special reservation because the percentage of candidates expected to fill the post from such a category was inadequate but before this, the government informed that if all the reserved seats are not filled by reserved-category candidates, then such seats could be allotted to other eligible candidates (including general category candidates).  

Further, they mentioned that decision to relax the cut-off for the special category, therefore, affected the chances of getting these spots for others falling outside the special category.

Hence, affected Aspirants moved to the High Court and the division bench of the Gujarat High Court prompted them to move to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ruled that the State government went against the set rules by reducing the cut-off marks to facilitate the appointment of candidates belonging to the horizontal reservation by treating it as a vertical reservation.

 The Court further held-

“Neither the State nor the selection committee has the unbridled power to modify the selection process and reduce cut-off marks after the results are published”

Hence, the Court found the High Court ruling in favour of the challenged decision to be unsustainable.