Rule 4(3)(d)(III) of the Rules of 2015 patently harmed the interests of the reservation category candidates, as even meritorious candidates from such categories, who had not availed any reservation benefit/relaxation, were to be treated as belonging to those reservation categories and they were not to be segregated with meritorious 19unreserved category candidates at the preliminary examination result stage. As a result, they continued to occupy the reservation category slots which would have otherwise gone to deserving reservation category candidates lower down in the merit list of that category, had they been included with meritorious unreserved category candidates on the strength of their marks. 31. In Saurav Yadav and others v. State of U.P. and others3, a 3-Judge Bench of this Court affirmed the principle that candidates belonging to any of the vertical reservation categories would be entitled to be selected in the ‘open category’ and if such candidates belonging to reservation