In a Zero Hour speech in Parliament on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (MP), and former Additional Solicitor General P Wilson, accused the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) of manipulating the reservation roster to exclude Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) from senior bureaucratic roles, reported The Mooknayak, today, Thursday, March 27.
The MP exposed how flawed roster systems, since 1997, have favoured Unreserved (UR) candidates, undermining the constitutional provision for social justice.
Wilson highlighted two DoPT memorandums — dated July 2, 1997, and January 31, 2019 — as the source.
In the 13-point roster, nine posts, including one for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), were allocated to Unreserved (UR) candidates instead of the rightful six, giving UR three excess posts.
According to the report, in smaller cadres, the bias was evident.
In two-post cadres, both went to UR candidates, removing reservations entirely. In six-post cadres, five were assigned to UR instead of three; and in three-post cadres, all went to UR candidates.
Key manipulations include the "first roster point" being reserved exclusively for UR candidates across departments, ensuring SC/ST/OBC officers are blocked from leadership roles like Secretaries.
Wilson called this a "constitutional fraud", and noted that it affected 27% of bureaucracy positions (SC-15%, ST-7.5%, OBC-27%) and violated the Supreme Court’s Indira Sawhney judgment, which capped reservations at 50% while emphasising equitable distribution.
He urged the scrapping of the current system and proposed that a high-level committee, chaired by a retired Supreme Court judge from a disadvantaged community, investigate the "scam" and recommend recruitment drives to compensate for the gap.
