The Supreme Court on Tuesday set aside a Madhya Pradesh High Court order that had made 3 years of prior legal practice mandatory for eligibility to the post of civil judge.
A Bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Atul S Chandurkar allowed the appeal filed by the Madhya Pradesh High Court itself, which had challenged a division bench ruling enforcing the new condition.
Background
Under the Madhya Pradesh Judicial Services Rules, 1994, candidates could apply for the entry-level civil judge exam without mandatory prior practice. However, on June 23, 2023, the rules were amended to require a minimum of 3 years’ legal practice.
The amendment was upheld by the High Court, but it triggered litigation when two unsuccessful candidates claimed they would have been eligible under the revised criteria. They sought a review of the cut-off and demanded exclusion of candidates who had cleared the preliminary exam without meeting the new practice requirement.
Court’s Order
On June 13, 2024, a division bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court directed that all candidates who had cleared the preliminary examination held on January 14, 2024, but did not meet the amended criteria of 3 years’ practice, be excluded from the recruitment process.
The order effectively stalled the recruitment, despite the fact that the amended rules had not been applied when the exam was initially conducted.
Court’s Intervention
The court had earlier stayed the High Court’s ruling, calling the re-examination exercise impractical. Advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey, representing the High Court, argued before the apex court that forcing a fresh round of exams would not only be “unconstitutional and impractical” but would also open the “floodgates of litigation.”
Accepting these arguments, the bench set aside the division bench’s order, allowing the recruitment process for civil judges to proceed without the mandatory practice requirement being retrospectively applied.
Significance Of The Ruling
The verdict resolves a year-long uncertainty surrounding the Madhya Pradesh civil judge recruitment process. It also clarifies that amendments to eligibility criteria cannot be applied in a manner that unsettles an ongoing recruitment exercise.
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