Delhi High Court Declines Pleas Of Candidates Excluded From Supreme Court Junior Court Assistant Recruitment

241 JCA vacancies were advertised by the Supreme Court Secretary General in February this year.

Petitioners claimed that despite qualifying the Typing Speed Test, they were excluded from the next stage of recruitment, i.e. Descriptive Test.

Justice Prateek Jalan at the outset noted that although the Petitioners were declared “Qualified”, they did not achieve the score of 43.18, as required to appear in the Descriptive Test.

Petitioners submitted that imposition of 43.18 cut-off marks in the Typing Test, to proceed to the Descriptive Test stage, was not provided in the Scheme of Examination and would therefore tantamount to “changing rules of the game mid-way”.

The Respondent-authority on the other hand referred to Clause 18 of the recruitment advertisement which stipulates that the Registry reserves its right to short-list candidates in any manner as may be considered appropriate with the approval of Competent Authority.

Considering both Clause 18 and the Scheme of Examination, the High Court held that a distinction must be made between 'qualifying' criteria provided in the advertisement and a 'shortlisting benchmark'— which can be supplied later, if the rules/ the advertisement permit.

“A limited reading of Clause 18, which mandates application of the same criteria as stated in the advertisement, for the purposes of shortlisting, denudes the Registry of the power expressly reserved by Clause 18. Such an analysis, which conflates qualification or eligibility criteria, with shortlisting or selection benchmarks, is in my view not consistent with Tej Prakash Pathak,” it observed.

In Tej Prakash Pathak & Ors. v. Rajasthan High Court & Ors (2025), a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held that eligibility criteria for being placed in the select list notified at the commencement of the recruitment process cannot be changed midway unless the extant rules so permit; and if such change is permissible, the change would have to meet the requirement of Article 14 of the Constitution and satisfy the test of non-arbitrariness.

In the case at hand, the High Court noted that the benchmark of 43.18 marks was applied on the basis of a ratio of 10 candidates for every vacancy.

Satisfied with its “appropriateness”, the Court said, “Shortlisting was being conducted, in the present case, at an intermediate stage of the recruitment, on the basis of a multiple of the number of vacancies. The marking scheme for Typing Test was known to candidates all along; they were well aware that they would be assessed on the basis of speed and accuracy. There was no change in these parameters of assessment. Consequently, the case does not raise any question of being taken by surprise, because the very same marking scheme was adopted.”

As such it dismissed the petitions.

Appearance: Dr. Amit George, Mr. Arkaneil Bhaumik, Ms. Shivalika Rudrabatla and Mr. Kartikay Puneesh, Mr. Dushyant Kaul, Ms. Rupam Jha, Ms. Medhavi Bhaila, Advocates for petitioner in W.P.(C) 110067/2025. Mr. Shubham Prajapati, Mr. Rakesh Kumar Mandal, Mr. Akash Kumar, Mr. Phillip Massey, Mr. Mahipal Singh, Ms. Shrishti, Mr. Aditya Raj Marandi and Ms. Muskan Dulet, Advocates for petitioners in W.P.(C) 11007/2025, W.P.(C) 11008/2025, W.P.(C) 11043/2025, W.P.(C) 11115/2025. Mr. Chetan Sharma, ASG with Ms. Pratima N. Lakra, CGSC, Mr. Amit Gupta, Mr. Chandan Prajapati, Mr. R.V. Prabhat, Mr. Vinay Yadav, Mr. Vikram Aditya, Mr. Shubham Sharma, Mr. Shailendra Kumar Mishra and Mr. Naman, Advocates, with Mr. T.I. Rajput, Registrar with Ms. Neetu Verma, Deputy Registrar, Ms. Sonika Khurana, Mr. Tarun Maurya, Court Assistant, SCI.

Case title: Pramiti Basu v. Secretary General Supreme Court Of India (and batch)

Citation: 2025 LiveLaw (Del) 1047

Case no.: W.P.(C) 11007/2025 (and batch)

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