SRINAGAR: The High Court of Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh has clarified that the three per cent reservation extended to the Children of Defence Personnel (CDP) under the Jammu Kashmir Reservation Rules, 2005, is an overall horizontal reservation and not a compartmentalised one. Dismissing a writ petition filed by an NEET-UG 2025 candidate, the Court held that such reservation cuts across vertical categories like Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and Open Merit, and candidates admitted under this quota must be adjusted within their respective categories based on merit.
Justice Sanjay Dhar made the ruling while rejecting a petition filed by Ravneet Kour, who had sought directions to the Jammu Kashmir Board of Professional Entrance Examination (BOPEE) to consider her candidature under the Children of Defence Personnel (CDP) Priority-IV quota within the Scheduled Tribe-2 (ST-2) category in the NEET-UG 2025 admissions.
The petitioner, represented by advocate Amullaya Gupta, appeared in NEET-UG 2025 conducted by the National Testing Agency on May 4 and secured 348 marks, obtaining a Union Territory rank of 3223. She alleged that the BOPEE had wrongly ignored her candidature under the CDP quota despite her higher priority status, and that candidates of lower priority within the same category had been selected in violation of the Ministry of Defence’s policy dated May 21, 2018.
The BOPEE, represented by Additional Advocate General Raman Sharma, countered the plea by stating that the three per cent horizontal reservation for female candidates under the CDP category had already been exhausted during the counselling process. The Board submitted that 21 female CDP candidates had been allotted MBBS seats and 3 BDS seats purely on merit, exceeding the prescribed 14 seats earmarked for female CDP candidates. Since the quota had been fully utilised based on merit, there was no requirement to displace any candidate to accommodate the petitioner.
The Board further maintained that the application of inter se priority, as invoked by the petitioner, did not arise because the horizontal reservation quota had already been satisfied and exceeded in accordance with the rules.
Justice Dhar observed that the petitioner had not provided the names or details of the candidates who had allegedly been selected despite having a lower CDP priority, nor had she made them parties to the petition. “The contents of the writ petition are bereft of any details in this regard. The petition on this ground alone deserves to be dismissed,” the Court said.
On merits, the Court found no illegality in BOPEE’s conduct. It accepted the Board’s submission that the three per cent reservation for female CDP candidates had been exhausted through merit-based selections, leaving no scope for rearranging the list.
Clarifying the legal position, Justice Dhar reiterated that the CDP reservation is an overall horizontal reservation, meaning it cuts across all vertical categories. “Three per cent reservation provided to Children of Defence Personnel is an overall horizontal reservation and not a compartmentalised horizontal reservation. It cuts across the vertical reservation, and a person selected against the CDP quota will have to be placed in the appropriate category,” the Court held.
To reinforce this interpretation, the Court referred to a Division Bench judgment in Syed Shaifta Arifeen Balkhi v. J&K Public Service Commission and Others (decided on October 25, 2024), which had clarified similar principles in the context of reservations for physically challenged persons. The judgment had observed that horizontal reservations “cut across” vertical categories and that such candidates are to be placed within their corresponding category, not in separate sub-quotas.
Justice Dhar noted that the provisional select list showed 24 female CDP candidates had already been selected on their own merit across various vertical categories, including Open Merit, Scheduled Caste, and Scheduled Tribe. Once the prescribed quota of 14 seats had been exceeded, there was “no occasion for BOPEE to displace any candidate from any of the categories to make way for a candidate having inferior merit but higher priority.”
Finding no violation of the reservation policy or procedural irregularity in BOPEE’s admission process, the Court dismissed the writ petition.
The judgment is expected to provide clarity for future admission cycles concerning how horizontal reservations, particularly for the wards of defence personnel, are to be implemented in Jammu and Kashmir’s professional entrance examinations.
