In September 2025, the Central Administrative Tribunal handed down what many in the disability rights community called a watershed moment. The CAT’s judgment in Molshree Aggarwal v. UPSC declared that the systematic exclusion of persons with Specific Learning Disabilities from reserved posts in the Civil Services Examination violated the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, as well as Articles 14, 16, and 21 of the Constitution. It directed the government to constitute a High-Powered Committee, identify suitable posts for Category D candidates, and ensure compliance before CSE 2026. The government’s response was to go to court to fight the order; and when that failed it decided to run out the clock.
On February 4, 2026, more than four months after the CAT judgment, UPSC released the CSE 2026 notification announcing 933 vacancies, including 33 posts reserved for Persons with Benchmark Disabilities. But the High-Powered Committee had not been constituted. Suitable posts for Category D had not been identified. The notification reflected no compliance with the CAT’s directions. The pattern was identical to what Molshree Aggarwal had challenged in the first place: Category D candidates, those with autism, intellectual disability, specific learning disability, and mental illness, could still claim age relaxation, still pay no application fee, but could not access reserved posts. The very inconsistency the Tribunal had described as “non-application of mind” was repeated, in plain sight, in the same notification cycle the CAT had been trying to reform.
Rather than comply, the Union of India challenged the CAT order before the Delhi High Court. The government’s arguments tracked closely the position it had taken before the Tribunal. UPSC contended that the CAT order was legally untenable as it exceeded the tribunal’s jurisdiction under the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, and that the tribunal had ventured into the realm of policy decisions otherwise reserved for the executive. It argued that the exclusion of Category D was formalised through reasoned exclusion policies based on an expert committee’s findings and office memoranda.  They also sought to argue that retrospective allocation of seats would be impermissible – a red herring given that this relief had at no point been sought or granted by CAT. The subtext was familiar: that reservations for persons with learning disabilities were an inconvenience to the system, not a constitutional obligation the system owed to them.
A bench of Justices Anil Kshetarpal and Amit Mahajan rejected the central government’s appeal, setting an eight-week deadline to comply with the CAT’s direction, which had not been implemented for over four months. The court found no merit in the challenge
The eight-week deadline runs to approximately mid-April 2026. The UPSC Prelims are scheduled for May 24, 2026. The application window which opened on February 4 and closed on February 24 has already shut. Consequently, candidates with Category D disability are on the verge of losing out on one more cycle of the civil service exams. Even if the High-Powered Committee is constituted before the deadline, even if suitable posts are identified in time, the CSE 2026 cycle will proceed without reserved posts for Category D. Applications have already been submitted. Vacancies have already been declared. The structural moment at which reservation could have been incorporated i.e. the notification stage has passed. This is how institutional noncompliance functions at its most efficient: not through outright defiance, which courts can sanction, but through procedural delay that makes compliance technically feasible while rendering it practically irrelevant for the current cycle.
The CAT’s September judgment had been unsparing about the government’s prior conduct. The expert committee that justified the exclusion of Category D lacked any specialists in specific learning disabilities. The DEPwD’s 2024 notification extending the exclusion till 2027 showed, in the Tribunal’s words, “predetermined intent to exclude.” Internal files revealed no evidence-based reasoning. The government had not consulted the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, as the RPwD Act expressly requires. The post-judgment period has only added to this record. The government chose litigation over compliance. It delayed constituting the committee the CAT had ordered. It released a fresh CSE notification without implementing the judgment. It lost in the High Court and now has eight weeks. Weeks that run almost entirely past the point of utility for the 2026 cycle.
For the disability rights advocates who had celebrated the September ruling, the question is no longer whether the law is on their side. Two courts have now said it is. The question is what enforcement looks like when the respondent is the state itself, when the examination cycle operates on fixed calendars, and when delay costs nothing to the government but everything to the candidates waiting. This is now the third consecutive examination cycle. 2024, 2025, and 2026 in which Category D candidates have been excluded from reserved posts. The RPwD Act’s mandate has existed since 2016. The CAT judgment is five months old. The Delhi High Court order is six weeks old. The right to reasonable accommodation, the CAT noted, is not a courtesy, it is a condition of justice. The question now is which government body, if any, will treat it as such before CSE 2027.
Haasi Jain
5th year, B.B.A LL.B (Hon), BML Munjal University School of Law.