In Brief
Bihar's state government amended its recruitment rules for Assistant Engineers in November 2022 to award extra marks for contractual work experience. The amendment was applied retroactively to a recruitment process that had already begun and reached an advanced stage, with written exams held in March 2022 and provisional merit lists published in June-July 2022. Candidates on those lists challenged the change as unfair. The Supreme Court agreed, holding that once a recruitment process has substantially commenced, the underlying rules cannot be altered mid-stream to disadvantage existing candidates. The Court set aside the retrospective application, directing that appointments be finalized strictly under the original 2019 rules.
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