Supreme Court strikes down midway rule changes in government job recruitment

Maintaining that transparency and non-discrimination must be the hallmarks of recruitment to public services, the Supreme Court said on Thursday that rules for selection of candidates for a particular post can’t be changed midway through the process or after completion of the process.

“Eligibility criteria for being placed in the select list notified at the commencement of the recruitment process can't be changed midway through the recruitment process, unless the extant rules so permit or the advertisement, which is not contrary to the extant rules, so permits, a five-judge Constitution Bench led by CJI DY Chandrachud said.

The Bench – which also included Justice Hrishikesh Roy, Justice PS Narasimha, Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice Manoj Misra – said placement in the select list gave no indefeasible right to a candidate to be appointed.

The top court said the state or its instrumentality for bonafide reasons may choose not to fill up vacancies. However, if vacancies exist, the state or its instrumentalities cannot arbitrarily deny appointment to a person within the zone of consideration in the select list, it noted.

Pronouncing the verdict for the Bench, Justice Misra said, “If such change is permissible under the extant rules or advertisement, the change would have to meet the requirement of Article 14 of the Constitution and satisfy the test of non-arbitrariness."

"Subject to the extant rules, recruiting bodies may devise appropriate procedure for bringing the recruitment process to its logical end provided the procedure adopted was transparent, non-arbitrary and had a rational nexus to the object sought to be achieved," the top court said.

It clarified that the recruitment process began with calling for applications and ended with the filling of vacancies.

The verdict endorses its top court’s ruling in K Manjusree, etc, versus state of Andhra Pradesh (2008) which said the rules of recruitment processes can’t be changed midway.

The dispute related to the recruitment process for filling up 13 vacancies for the post of translator in the Rajasthan High Court for which candidates were supposed to appear for a written test and an interview. However, the Rajasthan HC Chief Justice ordered that only those securing 75 per cent  or above marks would be selected and accordingly only three out of 21 candidates were selected. Three of the unsuccessful candidates moved the top court after the high court dismissed their plea.