Merit-based public administration

It has been widely reported in the national print media that the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh has upheld the quota system for retaining 75% positions of Deputy Secretary for the members of the BCS administrative cadre; in the self same judgment, the quota system for promotion to the posts of Joint and Additional Secretaries has been declared illegal. That is to say, from now onwards, in case of promotion to the posts of Joint and Additional Secretaries, eligible members of all cadres need to be considered equally. Now the question is, in the absence of any quota, what will be the criteria for making a pool of eligible candidates from among the members of different cadres in the first place?.
While the government presumably will have some hidden (?) criteria to choose or drop an otherwise eligible candidate, it will be imperative that the basic criterion be the batch-wise merit position prepared by Public Service Commission. For the sake of ensuring justice, there is no alternative to selecting eligible candidates for promotions on the basis of an undisputed merit list involving all the cadres. Other criteria like performance rating, academic qualification, integrity will understandably be taken into consideration for promotion.
The judgment delivered by the apex court of law has paved the way for establishing a bureaucracy based on merit. Will those at the helm of bureaucracy do it? Or will they just use the first part of the judgment that suits them best and come up with tens of excuses for not implementing the other part?
Those 'once bitten twice shy' have reasons to be sceptical. But failure to implement the historic verdict in its totality will not only be unfortunate but also detrimental to the future of the country's public administration and hence the public.