The Madras High Court has directed the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC) to cancel the provisional selection list it published on February 16 for the recruitment of 245 Civil Judges, and come up with a revised list within two weeks.
A Division Bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and K. Rajasekar agreed with advocate Balan Haridas, and Senior Counsel G. Sankaran and Dakshayani Reddy that the TNPSC had not properly followed the rule of reservation while drawing the provisional list.
Allowing a batch of writ petitions filed by nine aspirants to the post of Civil Judge, the judges pointed out that the TNPSC had issued a notification on June 1, 2023, inviting applications for recruiting 245 Civil Judges, which included 92 “carried forward” vacancies.
It was announced that the 92 “carried forward” vacancies would be filled by following Section 27 of the Tamil Nadu Government Servants (Conditions of Service) Act, 2016, and the rest of 153 regular vacancies would be filled by following the general rule of reservation.
As per law, the TNPSC must have drawn a merit list of meritorious candidates, irrespective of their caste, under the general category, without confining them to their respective caste groups such as Most Backward Classes (MBC), Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
However, in the present provisional list drawn by the TNPSC for Civil Judge recruitment, the petitioners’ counsel had drawn the attention of the court that many toppers had been confined to the MBC category - thereby depriving the chances of others to be considered under that category.
“Therefore, it is unambiguous that the top scorers were accommodated under the reserved category, and candidates who scored lesser marks were accommodated under the general category, which is running counter to the reservation policy,” the judges said, and ordered the publication of a revised list.
Since no candidate had been issued with an appointment order so far, and the publication of provisional selection list by itself does not confer any right of appointment, the judges held that it was not necessary to hear those provisionally selected candidates before ordering correction of the anomaly.
