Constitutionally, there is enough consensus around the fact that law must acknowledge the unequal realities of its subjects, and anything less than that may be formal equality but not substantive equality. However, this acknowledgement should also be holistic and precise because incomplete justice, after all, is injustice. The case of Rekha Sharma v High Court of Rajasthan, where a visually impaired woman from the economically weaker section (EWS), who had to approach the Supreme Court of India to claim her rightful seat as a judge—not because of a lack of merit, but because the system failed to fully see her—highlights the consequences of superficial and partial recognition.

India’s affirmative action system that has been captured in Articles 15 and 16 of its Constitution, has two types of reservations: vertical, for historically disadvantaged groups like Dalits and Indigenous communities, and horizontal, for groups like women, persons with disabilities, and EWS (financially disadvantaged individuals from the unreserved categories).

A crucial principle in the allocation of seats is that if a candidate belongs to a vertical category (e.g., Scheduled  Caste (SC)) and also qualifies under a horizontal category (e.g., Persons with Benchmark Disabilities (PwBD)), they should be accommodated under the vertical quota if they meet its cut-off, thereby preserving availability in the horizontal category for others. This constitutional design acknowledges that PwBDs are severely underrepresented, that a disabled person from the SC category is more marginalized than an able-bodied one, and that intersectionality matters.

In Rekha Sharma’s case, the petitioner applied for the State Judicial Services in 2021 under both the EWS and the person with benchmark disability (PwBD) category, implying that she belonged to the financially disadvantaged group as well as had a visual impairment of more than 40%. Despite scoring above the minimum qualifying marks in the benchmark disability category, she was denied selection, as one of the reserved posts was taken up by a disabled person from the Scheduled Caste (SC) category who had secured more marks than her. She argued that since the said person had met the higher cut-off for the vertical SC category, they could be adjusted within that category. This would free up a seat in the benchmark disability category, which could then be allocated to her. The Court found merit in her claim and held that the State’s failure to consider her intersecting identity was unjust, and accordingly directed her appointment.

This judgment is not merely a personal victory for one determined candidate, it marks a shift from passive tolerance to active acceptance of persons with disabilities (PwDs).

Firstly, the Court rejected the state’s reductionist view of merit, as per which the candidate with the higher marks should automatically be awarded the seat. Instead, it recognized the complex layers of identity—caste, class, disability, and gender—that shaped the parties’ experiences. The Court’s conception of merit was not rooted in the rigid logic of numbers but in an understanding of fairness, one that accounts for where individuals start, the systemic barriers they face, and the degree of support needed to equalise them.

Secondly, this judgment marks a leap in concretising the employment rights of persons with disabilities and opened doors that were previously closed to them. Just six years ago, the Indian Supreme Court in V Surendra Mohan v State of Tamil Nadu had barred blind and hearing-impaired individuals from becoming judges, citing concerns about the confidentiality of legal documents being compromised due to their reliance on stenographers. The Supreme Court did some course correction in Vikash Kumar v UPSC in 2021 by overturning the restrictive view in Surendra Mohan and foregrounding the principles of reasonable accommodation and disability inclusion within the golden triangle of Articles 14, 19, and 21 of the Constitution of India. Rekha Sharma, however, takes this project of inclusion further. Despite the existence of a legal vacuum in the law due to the peculiar facts of the case, the court used its powers under Article 142 “to do complete justice” and proactively created supernumerary posts for Sharma [15] – [16]. This is a huge shift from a judicial system that was earlier reluctant to even allow blind individuals to hold judicial offices. This shift is both constitutionally promising and instrumentally valuable, as it makes the judiciary more inclusive and reflective of the nation’s diversity.

We can only hope that the introspection by the courts is mirrored by other branches of the state, so that technical logic does not trump the constitutional rights of PwDs, and they are included and heard in all the spaces where it matters.