Case: The West Bengal State Electricity Transmission Co. Ltd. & Ors. v. Dipendu Biswas & Ors.| Citation: 2026 INSC 330 | Civil Appeal No. 10262 of 2025
Decided on: April, 07, 2026
Introduction
Can a candidate be “too disadvantaged” to compete in an open category?
In a country as constitutionally complex as India, few legal questions cut as close to the bone as those involving reservation. And when the law must grapple with someone who is both socially marginalised and disabled, the stakes become even higher. On April 7, 2026, the Supreme Court of India delivered a significant ruling that clarifies a long-contested intersection in reservation jurisprudence – the rights of SC/ST/OBC candidates who also qualify under horizontal reservation categories such as Persons with Disabilities (PWD).
In West Bengal State Electricity Transmission Co. Ltd. v. Dipendu Biswas, a bench comprising Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh held that a horizontally reserved post in the unreserved category is open to all candidates who possess the requisite horizontal attribute – whether they belong to the general category or to SC, ST or OBC and that merit must be the sole deciding factor among them. The ruling sets aside a troubling precedent set by the Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court and reasserts the constitutional primacy of equality and merit in public employment.
The Law: Understanding the Architecture of Reservation
To understand this judgment, it is essential to understand the dual framework of reservation under Indian law.
Vertical reservations are the familiar category-specific quotas for SC, ST, and OBC communities, flowing from Articles 15(4) and 16(4) of the Constitution. These are “exclusive pools” – posts earmarked for candidates belonging to specific social categories and not open to others. Horizontal reservations, by contrast, are cross-cutting entitlements conferred upon special groups – Persons with Disabilities, women, ex-servicemen and others – that cut across all vertical categories. A post may thus be designated as UR (PWD-LV), meaning it lies within the unreserved vertical pool but is specially earmarked for Persons with Disabilities with Low Vision.
The major legal question in this case was: when a post is tagged UR (PWD-LV), does the “UR” mean only candidates from the general/open social category can compete? Or does “UR” simply mean the post falls in the unreserved vertical pool, open to anyone – regardless of caste – who possesses the disability criterion?
The Supreme Court stated that the “Unreserved” or “Open” category is not a separate social compartment for those who are neither SC, ST, nor OBC. It is a common pool belonging to no one and accessible to everyone. An unreserved post horizontally reserved for PWD-LV candidates is simply a post open to all PWD-LV candidates across all social categories, with merit as the only arbiter. This position is firmly rooted in the Supreme Court’s earlier rulings, particularly Mahesh Gupta v. Yashwant Ahirwar which famously declared: “A disabled is a disabled. The question of making any further reservation on the basis of caste, creed or religion ordinarily may not arise. They constitute a special class.”
The Court also addressed the principle of “mobility” or “migration” – a well-settled doctrine in reservation law – which allows a meritorious reserved category candidate to be adjusted against an unreserved vacancy if they qualify on open merit without availing any concession or relaxation. This principle, grounded in Saurav Yadav v. State of Uttar Pradesh and related precedents, was extended by the Court to the domain of horizontal reservations.
The Facts and Ratio of the Case
The dispute arose from a recruitment drive by the West Bengal State Electricity Transmission Company Limited for the post of Junior Engineer (Civil) Grade II. The notification included one vacancy tagged UR (PWD-LV) and five vacancies for the OBC-A (Most Backward) category.
Two candidates are central to this dispute:
– Respondent No. 1 (Dipendu Biswas) – an unreserved/general category candidate with the PWD-LV attribute, who scored 55.667 marks.
– Respondent No. 3 – an OBC-A candidate who also had the PWD-LV attribute and scored 66.667 marks, a full 11 marks higher.
– Respondent No. 3 could not make the cut within the OBC-A pool due to stronger competition there. The appointing authority then considered him for the UR (PWD-LV) post – the one horizontally reserved for persons with low vision – and selected him on the basis of his superior merit. Respondent No. 1 challenged this appointment before the Calcutta High Court.
The Single Bench dismissed the challenge, upholding the merit-based selection. The Division Bench, however, reversed this decision, holding that since a qualified unreserved PWD-LV candidate (Dipendu Biswas) was available, the post must go to him – regardless of the OBC-A candidate’s higher marks.
The Supreme Court firmly set aside the Division Bench’s reasoning. Its key holdings were:
1. An “Unreserved” post is not a socially exclusive post. It does not belong to the general/forward category; it is an open field accessible to all. Merely labelling a post as “UR” does not bar SC/ST/OBC candidates from competing for it.
2. The horizontal attribute governs eligibility, not caste. For a UR (PWD-LV) post, the only eligibility condition is that the candidate must possess the PWD-LV attribute. Social category is irrelevant to eligibility – it is merit that decides selection
3. Merit cannot be defeated by a less meritorious candidate’s caste. Allowing a lower-scoring unreserved candidate to be preferred over a higher-scoring OBC candidate simply because both have the disability criterion would be “patently arbitrary and violative of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution.”
4. The “fallback clause” is not a restrictive bar. The notification’s clause stating that, if no qualified unreserved PWD-LV candidate is available, other categories may fill the post was interpreted as a fallback provision, not a ceiling that bars more meritorious reserved candidates when a (less meritorious) unreserved candidate exists.
5. No relaxation was availed. The OBC-A candidate had not taken any concession or relaxation in the selection process – a prerequisite for being counted against an unreserved post, as clarified in Deepa E.V. v. Union of India.
The appeal was allowed, the Division Bench’s order was set aside, and the original appointment of the more meritorious OBC-A PWD-LV candidate was restored.
An Intersectionality Perspective
What makes this judgment particularly significant is what lies beneath its legal surface – the lived reality of people who carry multiple marginalised identities simultaneously.
The candidate in question was not simply “a disabled person.” He was an OBC-A individual – belonging to the most backward sub-classification – who also had low vision. His identity sat at the intersection of caste-based disadvantage and disability-based disadvantage. The Calcutta High Court’s Division Bench, in preferring the less meritorious general category candidate, effectively punished him for having two sources of marginalisation rather than one.
This is the essence of intersectionality – a concept developed by legal scholar KimberlĂ© Crenshaw to explain how overlapping social identities create compounded forms of discrimination that single-axis legal frameworks often fail to capture. In the Indian context, a Dalit woman, a disabled OBC person or a transgender individual from a tribal community does not face discrimination on just one front. Their vulnerabilities are multiplicative, not additive.
The Division Bench’s reasoning exemplified this structural blindness. By treating the “UR” label as a caste-exclusive marker for the general category, the court inadvertently created a perverse outcome: a person belonging to a backward class and living with a disability was told he had too many identities to claim a seat in the open pool. His OBC status was used not to uplift him, but to exclude him from a post where his merit was objectively superior.
The Supreme Court’s intervention corrects this by insisting that the horizontal reservation framework must work inclusively. Disability is a shared human condition that does not discriminate by caste, and the legal system must reflect this. All persons with the same disability – irrespective of whether they are Dalit, tribal, backward class, or general category – stand on equal footing when competing for a horizontally reserved post in the unreserved pool. What separates them is merit alone.
This approach aligns well with India’s commitments under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, both of which recognise that disability intersects with other social identities to produce layered disadvantages requiring layered responses.
Conclusion
The Supreme Court’s ruling in West Bengal State Electricity Transmission Co. Ltd. v. Dipendu Biswas is more than a clarification of reservation mechanics – it is a constitutional affirmation that the law must see the whole person.
By holding that a horizontally reserved PWD post in the unreserved category belongs to no social group and must be filled purely by the most meritorious qualified candidate, the Court has done something quietly powerful: it has refused to allow one form of disadvantage (caste) to be wielded as a weapon against another (disability). It has insisted that India’s reservation architecture, at its best, is a structure of inclusion, not segmentation.
The judgment is a reminder that equality under Articles 14 and 16 is not merely formal – it cannot be satisfied by appointing a less deserving candidate simply because of their social label. Merit, contextually understood within the framework of horizontal reservation, must prevail. The ruling will stand as an important precedent for employment law, disability rights, and the evolving jurisprudence of intersectional justice in India.
Vivek Reddy, Laghima Bhagat and Bhavya Kohli
5th year B.A. L.L.B, BML Munjal University School of Law