SC gives High Court of Manipur one week to appoint District Judge
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, August 31 2024: A three bench judge of the Supreme Court has directed the High Court of Manipur to recruit one Salam Samarjeet as District Judge (Entry Level) in the Manipur Judicial Service Grade-I within four weeks.

The direction was given on August 22 in connection with the writ petition filed before the Supreme Court by Salam Samarjeet against the High Court of Manipur.

Senior Advocate Rana Mukherjee represented the petitioner while High Court of Manipur and the Registrar General were represented by Senior Counsel Vijay Hansaria.

The petition was filed on the ground that the petitioner applied for recruitment of a District Judge (Entry Level) in the Manipur Judicial Service Grade-I, the advertisement of which was published on May 15, 2013 .

SC gives High Court of Manipur one week to appoint District Judge

The petitioner belongs to a Scheduled Caste category and he appeared in the written examination conducted for the post in July 2013 .

However, the High Court of Manipur issued another notification on October 17, 2013 declaring that none of the candidates secured the minimum qualifying marks in the written examination.

A grievance was then raised by the petitioner and eventually a corrigendum was issued on Febraury 7, 2014 and declared that the petitioner passed the written examination as he scored 52.8 per cent given that he belongs to SC.

Just before the interview, the Full Court of the Manipur High Court on January 12, 2015 decided to fix 40 per cent as the cut-off for the viva-voce examination and the petitioner's case is that this decision was never intimated to him.

The petitioner, who had secured 18.8 marks out of the total 50 marks in the interview segment, was declared unsuccessful.

The Supreme Court observed that no notice was given to the petitioner regarding the imposition of minimum 40 per cent as the qualifying marks for the interview.

The decision of the Full Court to depart from the expected exercise in preparing the merit list is violative of Article 14 of the Constitution, said the Court while ruling that the the petitioner is entitled to be declared as a successful candidate in the recruitment test.

The Supreme Court directed the High Court to issue an appointment order to the petitioner within four weeks.

The petitioner, however, shall not be entitled to any actual monetary benefits for any period prior to his appointment, said the Court and added that the petitioner should be given notional seniority from 2015 when the interview was conducted.