raipur the chhattisgarh high court has dismissed a writ petition challenging a merit list released by the state public service commission psc in 2014 the court also vacated an interim order passed on may 18 2016 in favor of the petitioner paving the way for the appointment of the respondent as the deputy collectorhigh court judge justice narendra kumar vyas held that reservation beyond 30 is not permissible while dismissing the writ petition filed by himshikha sahuthe court stated that the respondent onkar yadav who currently serves as the deputy commissioner in the excise department should be granted equitable relief since he was deprived of working as the deputy collector for the past seven years through no fault of his own the court ordered that he be given seniority from the date his next senior was appointed to the post of deputy collectorthe court further ruled that pay fixation and other service benefits should be provided to yadav if yadavs next senior has been promoted the state government should consider yadavs annual confidential report acr for his promotion considering that yadav was not at faultthe psc had issued an advertisement for the appointment of officers including 21 posts for deputy collector the petitioner argued that the advertisement violated the women reservation rules 1997 as it did not provide any posts for obc women candidates for the position of deputy collector the petitioner sought a direction for the state government to reserve one post for obc women candidates in the advertisement published on december 17 2014in response the psc presented its reply with the distribution of vacancies for various categories of women to demonstrate compliance with the women reservation rules the psc clarified that it had adopted a uniform pattern by ignoring fractions as rounding off fractions to 1 would exceed the permissible limit of 30 reservation for women in all categories thus violating the reservation rules and the supreme court judgmentthe petitioner argued that 09 should be rounded off to 1 and accordingly one post should be reserved for obc women candidates the petitioner further contended that the state governments failure to reserve one post for obc women was a violation of the rulesthe senior counsel for the psc sharmila singhai argued that rounding off 09 to 1 would exceed the 30 reservation limit for women which is not permissible the psc maintained that it had adopted a uniform process of ignoring fractions to avoid exceeding the reservation limitvivek verma counsel for respondent yadav submitted that the petitioner ranked at serial number 29 clearly indicating that she did not secure a merit position therefore she had no standing to challenge yadavs appointment who was the thirdranking candidate in the obc category the counsel said