What Is Horizontal Reservation? Why Women Are Having Hard Time Claiming Them

Reservation for women has been debatable it comes with a lot of complexities. Constitution does not permit reservation for women in public employment, at best law only provides them through horizontal reservation. Indian reservations statute has shaped up in a way that the intersection of horizontal and vertical reservations throws up a host of technical, complicated queries. Should the horizontal reservations be calculated across the board (30 percent of women in X department), or compartmentalised ( category – General, OBC, SC, ST must have 30 percent of women), keeps hovering. 

Earlier, Supreme Court suggested - compartmentalised approach would be better as it takes care of inter-sectional concerns. 

Recently Madras High Court, in the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC) case, has categorically held that the reservation for women in public employment can only be made horizontally and not vertically. 

What is Horizontal Reservation?

The reservation for Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) is referred to as vertical reservation. Horizontal Reservations refer to reservations for beneficiaries such as women, veterans, the transgender community, and individuals with disabilities, cutting through the vertical categories. The biggest question is - can the vertical and horizontal quotas be applied together? For instance, a Scheduled Caste woman will get the reservation percentage under horizontal or vertical quota? The answer is the horizontal quota is always applied separately to each vertical category, and not across the board. If a woman has a 50 percent horizontal quota, then, half of all the selected SC candidates will necessarily have to be women. 

Court ordered the TNPSC to revise the merit list by preparing a 31 percent open category list followed by social reservation. The bench of Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice N Mala directed the TNPSC to arrange the candidates in the Open Category strictly in the order of merit, which would be 31 percent of the total vacancies, irrespective of caste or category. After preparing the first list, the second list should provide social reservation to the reserved category vertically, the judges. After the vertical reservation list, a horizontal reservation must be prepared. 

Earlier, in the Saurav Yadav case, Sonam Tomar (under OBC- Female category) participated in the selection process in 2013 for filling up posts of constables in the Uttar Pradesh police. Tomar secured 276.59 marks. OBC is a vertical reservation category, while the female is a horizontal reservation category. She failed to pass in their respective categories. However, it came to her knowledge that in the General-Female category, the last qualifying female had secured 274.8298 marks which were actually lower than Tomar's score. In Court, they claimed candidates with marks lower had been selected in the General Female category disregarding their claim. Apex Court dismissed the submissions of the UP government. 

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The above cases show our reservations system is complicated and yet has unsettled principles, because of which students suffer. They have to access court over marks and fight for their seat. So far, different High Courts have diverging observations on the matter. The orders are passed by looking at the cases subjectively. The court could go through the reservation law, find the loose end, and fix them. So the complexities could be minimised, and female students won't have to suffer.