Prayagraj: The Allahabad High court has directed the state govt to prepare a separate merit list for EWS candidates (women) providing 20% horizontal reservation in 2021 recruitment for the selection of sub-inspector (civil police)/platoon commander PAC/FSSO, fire service.Justice Saurabh Shyam Shamshery passed the order on May 23 while allowing a bunch of petitions filed by Neha Sharma and 53 others. The court observed: “The state has accepted that seats for woman horizontal reservation under open (general) category (722) and under economical weaker section category (181) were clubbed together and in total 903 seats were allotted to woman and thus claimed that entire reservation of women in both said categories was satisfied.” Appearing for petitioners, their counsel argued that the state govt wrongly clubbed reservation for women in open category and EWS. Therefore, though total number of seats reserved for women were filled but still only 34 women under EWS quota were benefited of reservation instead of 181. The state had failed to show any provision, order or GO that instead of applying reservation for woman independently and separately under open category and EWS, they could club both reservations.