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Rahul Dutta & Ors. v. The State of Bihar & Ors.

Writ Petition (Civil) · 2019 INSC 202Decided 14 Feb 2019
Writ Petition (Civil) No. 71 of 2019
Justice Arun Mishra · Justice Navin Sinha

Background

Candidates who had appeared for the preliminary examination for recruitment to the post of Civil Judge (Junior Division) in Bihar challenged a 2016 rule (Rule 5A of the Bihar Civil Service (Judicial Branch) (Recruitment) Rules, 1955) that allowed only the top 10% of candidates who appeared in the preliminary exam to advance to the final written examination. The petitioners argued this violated the Supreme Court's own earlier ruling in Malik Mazhar Sultan, which had directed that candidates be called for the final exam in a ratio of 1:10 relative to the number of available vacancies: a very different (and much larger) pool than "10% of all candidates who appeared."

Decision Breakdown

The Court agreed that Rule 5A(3) violated the ratio fixed in Malik Mazhar Sultan and was independently arbitrary, since it drastically and unreasonably shrank the field of candidates competing for the final exam: for example, reserved-category candidates ended up being called in a ratio of roughly 1:1 to vacancies instead of the mandated 1:10. The Court also flagged that the Rule failed to prescribe any minimum qualifying marks for the preliminary exam, though it declined to retroactively fix such marks for the examination already held, instead directing the State, High Court, and Public Service Commission to fix proper minimum marks for future exams. Balancing fairness with the practical reality that the final exam was already scheduled, the Court accepted the Commission's revised list calling roughly ten times the number of vacancies (based on recalculated, reasonable cut-off marks) and directed that the final written exam be held within six weeks. The Court accordingly struck down Rule 5A(3) and allowed the writ petitions, while leaving the horizontal reservation issue for women as already resolved and leaving other rule-amendment questions to the High Court's ongoing administrative process.

Lesson Learnt

A government recruitment rule that restricts how many exam-takers can advance to the next stage must be consistent with binding precedent and cannot arbitrarily shrink the competitive field far below what fairness and prior court directions require: courts will strike down such rules even close to an already-scheduled exam, while balancing the practical disruption that correction causes.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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