In Brief
A civil servant aspirant from the Scheduled Caste category qualified a judicial service recruitment examination with aggregate marks of 50.6%, meeting the 50% threshold for SC candidates in the written test and securing 18.8 marks in the subsequent viva-voce. The High Court of Manipur later disqualified him on the basis of a 40% minimum cut-off for the interview, introduced by Full Court Resolution just before the interview and never communicated to candidates. The Supreme Court held that executive instructions cannot override statutory rules specifying selection based on aggregate marks and that introducing new criteria midway, without prior notice, violates substantive legitimate expectation and Article 14. The Court declared the petitioner successful and directed his appointment with notional seniority from 2015 for superannuation purposes only.
The lawyer headnote and full judgment text are available to registered users.