Divorcees Can Be Shifted to Unfilled Widow-Quota Posts and Judged on Widow Cut-Off: Rajasthan High Court

An advertisement of 16.12.2022 invited applications for 21,000 posts of Primary Teacher (General) Level-I (para 2.1). Under its sub-clause 5, 2% of the posts were reserved for divorcee candidates, and vacancies left when enough widow candidates were not available were to be filled by divorcee candidates (para 2.1). The 27 petitioners applied as divorcees for the Non-TSP area and were called for document verification after the results of 26.05.2023, but were left out of the final result of 31.08.2023 when the OBC and EWS divorcee cut-offs were raised (paras 1, 2.1-2.2). They relied on Nikhat Amin; the respondents said the Department was still deliberating on that judgment and intended to challenge it (paras 5-6).

The question was whether, when there are not enough candidates in the widow category, a divorcee can switch to the widow category, and vice versa; the Court answered it in the affirmative (paras 3-4). The judge found the petitioners' case covered by his earlier judgment in Nikhat Amin v. State of Rajasthan & Ors. (decided on 15.01.2024) and extracted its relevant part (para 7). The respondents' plea that the Department was considering a challenge to that judgment did not change this (paras 6-7). In the extract, widow and divorcee posts are interchangeable under Clause 5 of the advertisement when one category lacks suitable candidates. Once they are interchangeable, the recruiting agency must offer the post, subject to its merit list, to the next eligible candidate of either category until all the posts are exhausted; a candidate may be refused only if she is ineligible or below the cut-off of the category she moves to. A divorcee shifted to a vacant widow post is assessed on the widow cut-off, and if separate seniority lists are kept she goes to the bottom of the widows' list (para 7). Seeing no reason to deny the petitioners that benefit, the Court so ordered (paras 8-9).