Can the recruitment rules for government jobs be changed midway? Supreme Court gave important decision

New Delhi : The Supreme Court gave an important decision on Thursday. The court said that the rules regarding recruitment in government jobs cannot be changed after the selection process begins. The Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court ruled that the ‘rules of the game’ cannot be changed midway after the selection process for posts has begun, unless the relevant rules clearly permit doing so. This case was related to recruitment to the post of translator in Rajasthan High Court. The bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud said in its important decision, ‘The recruitment process begins with the issue of the advertisement inviting applications and indicating the vacancies. Is called upon to fill. The eligibility criteria for inclusion in the selection list notified at the beginning of the recruitment process cannot be changed midway unless the extant rules permit it or the advertisement, which is not contrary to the extant rules, permits it. ‘

This decision was given by a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Justice DY Chandrachud. The bench also included Justices Hrishikesh Roy, PS Narasimha, Pankaj Mittal and Manoj Mishra.

The hearing of the case was completed in July 2023. The Supreme Court said in its decision that the rules for government jobs cannot be changed after the recruitment process starts. The court in its old decision ‘K. Manjushree vs. State of Andhra Pradesh’ (2008) upheld. In this decision it was said that the rules of the recruitment process cannot be changed midway. The court also said in its decision that getting a place in the selection list does not give the candidate full right to employment.

The Supreme Court said that the decision of ‘K Manjushree’ is correct. This decision cannot be considered wrong because it did not consider the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision ‘State of Haryana vs. Subhash Chander Marwah’. In the ‘Marwah’ case, the court had said that candidates scoring minimum marks do not have the right to a job. The government can set higher standards for higher posts.

This matter is related to the recruitment process to fill 13 translator posts in the staff of Rajasthan High Court. Candidates had to appear in a written examination followed by an interview. Twenty one candidates appeared. Of these, only three were declared successful by the High Court (administrative side). Later it was revealed that the Chief Justice of the High Court had ordered that only those candidates who had secured at least 75 percent marks should be selected. The special thing is that when the High Court issued the notification of the recruitment process for the first time, this 75 percent criterion was not mentioned. Moreover, only by applying this revised criteria, three candidates were selected and the remaining candidates were eliminated.

The three unsuccessful candidates challenged this result by filing a writ petition before the High Court, which was dismissed in March 2010, following which they (appellants) approached the Supreme Court for relief. The Appellants argued that the decision by the Chief Justice of the High Court to impose a minimum 75 per cent marks criterion was tantamount to ‘changing the rules of the game after the game has been played’, which was not correct. In support of this, he/she Cited the 2008 Supreme Court decision in Manjushree etc vs State of Andhra Pradesh.