by Faiqa Masoodi
SRINAGAR: In a case that could potentially alter the contours of affirmative action in Jammu and Kashmir, the High Court at Srinagar has admitted a petition challenging the constitutional validity of the region’s prevailing reservation framework. Filed by six educated youth including job aspirants, students and an in-service employee, the petition alleges that the current reservation policy, capping as high as 70 percent, has become an instrument of exclusion for open merit candidates, who make up more than 70 percent of the population in Jammu and Kashmir as per the 2011 Census.
The petition, Zahoor Ahmad Bhat & Others v. UT of J&K & Others, has been filed under Article 226 of the Constitution and seeks to strike down key provisions of the Jammu and Kashmir Reservation Act of 2004 and its allied rules framed in 2005. The plea also challenges multiple Statutory Orders and recruitment advertisements issued since 2019, which the petitioners claim were brought in arbitrarily, without any supporting data or survey to justify expansion of quota limits. The petition is being argued by senior advocate M Y Bhat, supported by advocates J M Junaid and Nahida Mushtaq, with Zahoor Bhat also appearing in person.
The petition alleges that successive statutory orders have inflated reservation percentages to the extent that open merit candidates are now left with only 30 percent of the available jobs and educational seats.
Among the changes highlighted is the increase in reservation for Scheduled Tribes from 10 to 20 percent through the creation of ST-1 and ST-2 sub-categories.
The social caste category has been expanded and renamed as OBC with its share increasing from 2 to 8 percent.
ALC has been raised from 3 to 4 percent, persons with disabilities from 3 to 4 percent, and a 10 percent quota has been introduced for Economically Weaker Sections.
Meanwhile, the reservation for the RBA category has been halved from 20 to 10 percent.
In total, these changes have resulted in reserved categories cornering 70 percent of all government jobs and admissions, while candidates from the open merit category, despite their demographic majority, are left competing for the remaining 30 percent.
The petition presents 14 years’ worth of selection data from the Jammu and Kashmir Public Service Commission, which the petitioners argue clearly demonstrates that candidates from reserved categories have been overrepresented.
In the JKAS selections from 2011 to 2024, out of 1178 total posts, only 487 candidates were selected from open merit while 691 posts were filled by candidates from reserved categories.
The same trend appears in other key services. In Civil Judge selections for 2018 and 2024, reserved category candidates took 59 percent of the seats. For the post of Prosecuting Officer in 2021, only 33 percent of the successful candidates came from open merit while 67 percent belonged to reserved categories.
The petition includes a detailed statistical analysis of selections made by the Jammu and Kashmir Services Selection Board (JKSSB), particularly highlighting disproportionate representation across recruitment cycles. It cites that even in JKSSB selections, reserved category candidates have frequently exceeded their designated quotas by also securing a significant number of Open Merit seats. This trend, according to the petitioners, reveals a pattern of excessive and over-adequate representation of reserved category candidates.
The data compiled by using official selection lists, shows that in several advertised posts between 2011 and 2024, the Open Merit share has consistently been reduced to below 40 per cent, while reserved categories have taken up nearly 60 per cent of total selections, thus reinforcing the plea’s core argument that the reservation structure is no longer remedial but exclusionary.
The petitioners argue that these figures are in direct violation of Article 16(4) of the Constitution, which allows for reservations only if a particular class is not adequately represented in public services. They claim that the government has neither conducted any survey nor established any commission to assess underrepresentation or gather quantifiable data as mandated by the Supreme Court in the Indra Sawhney judgment. Instead, the petition alleges, the government has arbitrarily increased reservations, and has even failed to exclude services that require the highest levels of intelligence and skill, such as judiciary, medical specialists, scientists, and professors, from the reservation regime, as provided in Section 3 of the J&K Reservation Act.
The plea also questions the 10 percent reservation granted to the EWS category. It cites an official reply in the J&K Legislative Assembly (Starred AQ No. 647) which confirmed that only 29,693 EWS certificates have been issued across the Union Territory in the past six years.
The petition argues that this number represents less than one percent of the population, and hence does not justify a 10 percent reservation in jobs and admissions. The petition contends that EWS reservation, too, is an enabling provision under Article 16(6), and without population-level data or socioeconomic surveys, such reservation becomes unconstitutional.
Relying on the precedent set by the Patna High Court, which recently struck down Bihar’s attempt to increase reservations from 50 to 65 percent on similar grounds, the petitioners argue that Jammu and Kashmir’s reservation framework not only violates the 50 percent ceiling laid down by the Supreme Court but also fails the test of rationality, data-backed policy-making and constitutional balance. The petitioners have called for a return to a data-driven approach and seek directions from the court to constitute a fresh backward class commission to assess the actual level of representation.
The High Court, while admitting the petition, has issued notice to the UT government and directed that all appointments made under the impugned reservation rules will remain subject to the outcome of the case. The matter is expected to come up for hearing later this month. If the petition succeeds, it could bring sweeping changes to the way Jammu and Kashmir structures its reservation system and reset the balance between social justice and merit-based opportunity.
People associated with the exercise told Kashmir Life that the fresh petition decision was the outcome of almost 150-minute arguments on July 14 in the court of division bench in which it was conclusively established that the reserved categories are getting a share in opportunities which much more than the population share they have in Jammu and Kashmir population, as per the last census. The debate suggested that the open merit population is touching 80 percent but have access to only 39 per cent opportunities.
The arguments indicated that the crisis lies in the section 3 of the Jammu and Kashmir Reservation Act 2004, which needs to be challenged. It was on basis of this that the court permitted withdrawal of the earlier petition so that the petitioners come with a new petition that is updated in wake of the arguments on record so far. Court permitted the withdrawal and ruled that the new petition will be accepted and the arguments will start.
It was on the basis of these arguments that a division bench comprising Justice Sanjeev Kumar and Justice Sanjay Parihar on Monday dismissed a batch of petitions as withdrawn, granting the petitioners liberty to file a fresh plea challenging the constitutional validity of key provisions of the Jammu and Kashmir Reservation Act, 2004. The petitions, filed under Article 226 of the Constitution, had earlier questioned several amended rules of the J&K Reservation Rules, 2005.
The bench comprising was hearing a clutch of writ petitions—WP(C) Nos. 2762/2024, 2882/2024, 2886/2024 and 2908/2024, clubbed together with WP(C) No. 2864/2024. The petitioners had primarily challenged Rules 4, 5, 13, 15, 18, 21 and 23 of the Reservation Rules as amended through SOs 176 of March 15, 2024, 127 of April 20, 2020, and 305 of May 21, 2024.
During the proceedings, the bench observed that all the petitions were based on an interpretation of Section 3 of the 2004 Act which, according to the petitioners, required the government to collect data to assess the adequacy of representation of reserved categories. However, the court noted that Section 3 merely provides for determining reservation percentages in accordance with the population share of the respective reserved categories within the total population of the Union Territory.
Justice Sanjeev Kumar, reading from the statute, noted that Section 3 did not impose a mandatory obligation on the government to collect service-based representation data. He pointed out that none of the pending petitions had actually challenged Section 3 of the Act itself. When this legal position was pointed out to the petitioners’ counsel, senior advocate M Y Bhat sought permission to withdraw all the petitions, barring WP(C) 2864/2024, with liberty to file a new writ petition squarely challenging Section 3 and other relevant provisions of the 2004 Act.
The court allowed the withdrawal and recorded the statement of counsel. Accordingly, all petitions except WP(C) 2864/2024 were dismissed as withdrawn, with liberty granted to move afresh against the parent legislation. WP(C) 2864/2024 has been listed for further hearing on July 23, 2025.
