Civil Judge Recruitment: Relief to SC-ST Candidates, High Court Orders New List
On 21 November, a division bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Sachdeva and Justice Vinay Saraf heard a petition challenging the irregularities in the Civil Judge Recruitment Examination 2022, including the implementation of 100% reservation and the exclusion of reserved category candidates who qualified for the unreserved category based on merit.
The same division bench again heard the matter on Friday regarding alleged irregularities in the recruitment process, implementation of full reservation, and non-inclusion of meritorious reserved category candidates in the unreserved category.
The Court maintained the earlier interim order under which all appointments made through the Civil Judge Recruitment Examination 2022 remained subject to the final outcome of the petition. The Court also issued fresh directions to reconsider SC-ST candidates. The examination division has been instructed to relax the minimum qualifying marks and prepare a new list.
Since SC-ST candidates are not qualifying in sufficient numbers, the Court suggested making provisions for free coaching as well. According to Senior Advocates Rameshwar Singh Thakur and Pushpendra Kumar Shah, the public interest litigation was filed by the organisation Advocate Union for Democracy and Social Justice, challenging the amendment made to the 1994 Recruitment Rules by the Madhya Pradesh High Court, Jabalpur, for the Civil Judge Recruitment Examination 2022.
The petition states that 199 posts were advertised, including 48 unreserved posts (17 backlog), 18 Scheduled Caste posts (11 backlog), 121 Scheduled Tribe posts (109 backlog), and 10 OBC posts (1 backlog). Out of the total 199 posts, 138 were backlog vacancies, including six reserved for persons with disabilities.
No ST Candidate Qualified
After all three stages—preliminary exam, main exam, and interview—only 79 candidates were found eligible. These included 15 OBC candidates, 3 SC candidates, and none from the ST category. The petition argues that backlog posts are exclusively for reserved categories. Additionally, not a single meritorious reserved category candidate was selected for the unreserved category.