While hearing the handful of petitions that were filed to challenge the prevailing reservation policy in asserting the seniority in the employment corridors of the state government of Tamil Nadu, the Madras High court had declared that the reservation policy and roster based merit system were unconstitutional and noted that the policy goes beyond one's authorized legal powers.

The division bench of state's top judicial body comprised of Justices Sundresh and Teekaa Raman has observed that the existing roster system is an indirect and oblique way of providing reservation beyond the 69 percent which currently followed by the state and the bench had pronounced the Sections 1(2), 40, 70 of the Tamil Nadu Government Servants Act 2016 as unconstitutional. By terming the sections as illegal, the Justices unanimously noted that these existing sections of state legislation that are considered in effect from January 1st, 1955 have a posterior effect on the recruitment.

The order has come after the bunch of state government engineers, through their petitions, had argued for proposing a merit-based seniority system as a replacement for the roster system and the Justices notified that the seniority in the government employment must be asserted on the grounds of merit and cited that the current roster system had prompted the employment of less merit government servant with reserved category by overruling the backward class servant with good merit.

The High court had observed that the reservation should be determined on the need basis, not as the automatic one and stated that it has to be followed especially for the special reservation. By pronouncing the existing roster system as unconstitutional, the high court has awarded 12 weeks for the state government to change the current practice and to draft the policy of the merit-based seniority in the government employment corridors.