Ask an establishment officer for the reservation percentages and you will almost always get 15, 7.5, 27 and 10. Those are correct for direct recruitment on an all-India basis by open competition, which is the commonest case. They are not correct for the other three modes, and the differences are not trivial — one mode carries SC at 16.66 per cent, and promotion carries no OBC or EWS reservation at all.
The four modes
| Mode of recruitment | SC | ST | OBC | EWS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Direct recruitment, all-India basis, by open competition | 15% | 7.5% | 27% | 10% |
| Direct recruitment, all-India basis, otherwise than by open competition | 16.66% | 7.5% | 25.84% | 10% |
| Direct recruitment to Group C and D posts normally attracting candidates from a locality or region | State or Union Territory specific, subject to the 50% limit | 10% | ||
| Promotion | 15% | 7.5% | Nil | Nil |
These are drawn from the consolidated instructions on reservation, Office Memorandum No. 36011/1/2022-Estt.(Res-I), read with the EWS Office Memorandum of 31 January 2019.
Why the second mode looks odd
SC at 16.66 per cent and OBC at 25.84 per cent look like arbitrary figures until you add them up. Open competition totals 49.5 per cent. The second mode totals exactly 50.0 per cent.
That is the design. Direct recruitment otherwise than by open competition historically carried a higher share for the Scheduled Castes, and the OBC figure was then set at the residual needed to reach the Indra Sawhney ceiling precisely. The apparently strange decimals are the arithmetic of hitting fifty exactly.
The practical point is that this mode has its own model roster — Annexure-IV to the 2019 Office Memorandum, with its own L-shaped roster at Annexure-V for small cadres. You cannot use the open-competition roster and adjust it.
Promotion: two categories only
Reservation in promotion is confined to the Scheduled Castes at fifteen per cent and the Scheduled Tribes at seven and a half per cent. There is no OBC reservation and no EWS reservation in promotion.
The constitutional reason was set out in Part 1: Article 16(4A), which authorises reservation in promotion, is confined by its own words to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and Article 16(6) on EWS applies to direct recruitment. The administrative consequence is that direct recruitment and promotion must be maintained on separate rosters. The 1997 Office Memorandum says so expressly, and the reason is simply that the two rosters have different categories in them.
Reservation in promotion also applies only where the element of direct recruitment does not exceed seventy-five per cent, and it operates in Groups B, C and D and in the lowest rung of Group A.
Group C and D posts recruited locally
Where a Group C or Group D post normally attracts candidates from a particular locality or region, the percentages follow the demographic position of the State or Union Territory concerned rather than the all-India figures, subject to the combined SC, ST and OBC total not exceeding fifty per cent.
The figures vary widely — a State with a large tribal population carries a correspondingly higher ST percentage and a lower OBC percentage, and in some States and Union Territories one of the categories is nil. The complete table is in the consolidated instructions, and it is worth pulling the current version rather than relying on a figure remembered from a previous posting, because the table has been revised.
EWS: direct recruitment only
The ten per cent for economically weaker sections applies to direct recruitment and took effect for vacancies notified on or after 1 February 2019. There is no EWS reservation in promotion.
Because EWS came in later than the rest, the 2019 Office Memorandum required every establishment to recast its group-wise post-based roster registers for direct recruitment in the revised formats, interpolating EWS with the existing categories. If a register in your section has not been recast since 2019, that is worth checking.
A practical check on your own figures
Two arithmetic checks catch most errors before they reach a register.
First, the number of posts reserved for a category is the cadre strength multiplied by the percentage, with fractions ignored — not rounded. A cadre of thirty posts gives 30 × 7.5 per cent = 2.25 for the Scheduled Tribes, which is two posts, not three.
Second, that figure should agree with the roster. In the open-competition roster the ST points at or below 30 are 14 and 28 — two points. The arithmetic and the roster always agree, and if they do not, one of them has been done wrong. The reference table in the Reservation Roster Trainer lets you check any cadre size quickly.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q1. What counts as recruitment otherwise than by open competition?
Broadly, direct recruitment made on an all-India basis by a method other than open advertisement and competitive examination — for example recruitment through a limited departmental competitive examination or by other prescribed non-open methods. The distinguishing feature for roster purposes is that it carries its own percentages, SC 16.66 and OBC 25.84, and its own model roster at Annexure-IV.
Q2. Why is OBC 25.84 per cent rather than 27?
Because in that mode SC is 16.66 per cent rather than 15. The total of SC, ST and OBC is held at exactly fifty per cent to stay within the Indra Sawhney ceiling, so the OBC figure is the residual after the higher SC share is provided for.
Q3. Do we round the number of reserved posts up or down?
Neither — fractions are ignored. A cadre of 30 posts gives 2.25 ST posts, which becomes 2. This is a truncation rule rather than a rounding rule, so 2.9 would also become 2.
Q4. Is there EWS reservation in promotion?
No. EWS reservation under Article 16(6) applies to direct recruitment only, for vacancies notified on or after 1 February 2019. Reservation in promotion is confined to SC at 15 per cent and ST at 7.5 per cent.
Related Reading
Next: how the roster points are derived, including why the published table cannot be reproduced from the formula alone.