Madhya Pradesh High Court upholds 3-year law practice or 70% marks as eligibility criterion for State judicial service

The Madhya Pradesh High Court recently upheld the rule prescribing an eligibility of at least three years practice or 70 per cent marks in law graduation for entry-level judicial service candidates in the State [Devansh Kaushik vs The State Of Madhya Pradesh and Anr]..The division bench of Chief Justice Ravi Malimath and Justice Vishal Mishra said the intent of the amended rule was quality centric and that the High Court’s hope and desire was to ensure that the best among the best are selected as judges.“It is an endeavour to achieve excellence. Excellence should always have precedence over mediocrity,” said the Court..The Court further reasoned that the interest of the litigants who approch courts for justice was far more important than the interest of the individuals. “In case the contentions of the petitioners are accepted, then, it only ensures maintenance of status-quo of a low standard that has been existing for decades. For decades a minimum qualification was sufficient. There has been no attempt in order to ensure the enhancement of quality. It is for the first time that the High Court has attempted to do so. It is being done in the larger interest of the litigants and the society at large,” the Court said..It further observed that the intention of the High Court was to raise the bar to ensure that the finest of law graduates become judges.“It is a matter of public knowledge that the students focus more on clearing the Civil Judges’ exam rather than concentrating on their academics. Their object is to pass the Civil Judges’ exam rather than to do well in college. At the expense of college studies, they even join tutorials who coach them towards the Civil Judge exam,” the High Court stated. .The Court also said that standards for the judiciary have remained stagnant for decades without any improvement, while in all other professions the standards have gone up.“Standards have remained stagnant for decades, without any improvement. In all professions the standards are increased at regular intervals except for the judiciary. The judiciary has remained content with the levels of standards fixed decades ago. The judiciary has remained content with the levels of standards fixed decades ago. This may not be appropriate," the judgment said.Hence, it is high time that the judiciary also competes on excellence in order to ensure that excellent results are achieved. "It is only when a brilliant law graduate with a brilliant academic career is selected as a judge, that one can be sure that the judgments will be qualitative.”It also said that doing nothing to improve the status-quo would be a gross dereliction of the constitutional obligations. .The Court passed the decision on a batch of petitions challenging the amendment to the Rule 7 of the Madhya Pradesh Judicial Service (Recruitment and Conditions of Service) Rules, 1994, which was notified last year. As per the amended rule, aspirants are required to have either an experience of three years as a ‘practising’ advocate, or should have been an ‘outstanding’ law graduate with a ‘brilliant academic career’ having passed all exams on the first attempt by securing at least 70% marks in aggregate (for General & Other Backward Class category candidates) and 50% marks for candidates belonging to the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe categories.Earlier, the criterion on least three years experience at the Bar had been deleted in view of the Supreme Court’s 2002 decision in All India Judges Association And Ors vs Union Of India And Ors where the top court had accepted the Shetty Commission recommendation that it was not mandatory for an applicant to have three years of practice..The bench of Justice Malimath and Justice Mishra in the ruling dated April 1 said the apex court’s judgment was not being properly applied as it was being misread to the advantage of certain candidates, thereby, allowing “non-meritorious” law graduates to apply.“The recommendation of the Shetty Commission was that it is no longer mandatory to be an advocate with three years practice and that young and brilliant law graduates with a brilliant academic career should also be permitted to participate in the exam,” it noted..The Court rejected the argument that a clarification was required from the Supreme Court before making the amendment and said that the same was in consonance with the top court’s verdict. .The Court further said that the Shetty Committee by recommending doing away with the requirement of three years practice had only created a window for “outstanding law graduates with a brilliant academic career” to participate in the exam. It was ostensibly on the ground that a brilliant law graduate with a brilliant academic career, who undergoes a two years intensive training, may substitute the three years experience of an advocate, the Court observed.“Therefore, probably a three years experience was co-related to an outstanding law graduate with a brilliant academic career with the aforesaid training. It is for this reason that a candidate who is neither brilliant nor who has a brilliant academic career could never ever substitute a three years practice. Therefore, the intention of the recommendation by the Shetty Commission was probably to the effect that a three years practice can be equated only with such a law graduate who is an outstanding law graduate and who has a brilliant academic career with training," the judgment said. The Court thus opined that those who do not possess the requirement would necessarily have to practice for three years. Otherwise, it said that any law graduate who has passed in any manner can always be compared with a candidate who has put in three years experience..It also rejected the argument that the requirement was in violation of the right to equality before law.“The contention that students in different universities secure different marks, which therefore leads to disparity in assessing the merit of the candidates, in our considered view, cannot be accepted. Whether a student obtains high marks or low marks, is not only dependent on the university. It may be dependent on the lecturer or professor correcting the examination papers. It cannot be said that one university is strict and another is liberal,” said the Court.The Court also upheld the condition that the candidate should have cleared all exams in the first attempt. It reasoned that when one is to see who is a brilliant law graduate with a brilliant academic career, the one who has failed cannot be considered. It rejected the argument that a student who may have failed in a non-law subject should get some relaxation. On the argument that there was a difference between a law graduate who has completed a three-year course and one who has completed the five year course, the Court said the Advocates Act and the Bar Council of India does not make any such distinction..Pertinently, the Supreme Court during the pendency of the present petitions before the High Court, had directed that all the candidates be allowed to participate in the Civil Judge, Junior Division (Entry Level) Recruitment Examination – 2022.While upholding the amendment, the High Court noted that even after such relaxation allowing all candidates to appear on the basis of the rule that prevailed earlier, only six of the total 55 petitioners had passed the preliminary examination.“Even among the 49 petitioners who did not qualify, three of them did not even appear in the preliminary examination and two of the petitioners did not even apply for the said exam. It is indeed a very sorry state of affairs to notice that in the lead case in W.P. No.15150 of 2023 the petitioner therein did not even appear for the preliminary exam,” it stated..Meanwhile, the Court in a relief for the aspiring candidates also ordered that the authorities shall not insist on production of six orders sheets for one year as the proof of practice, as required under the advertisement issued in November 2023.The counsel representing the candidates had argued that there are many cases where the candidate would have argued before the court, but their name would not be reflected in the order sheets for various reasons.The Court accepted the argument and said the order sheets should not be the sole criteria to determine the practice of a candidate. “However, we add that in the absence of providing six order sheets etc. per year as a proof of practice for three years, the candidate must produce some material to justify his claim that he has been in continuous practice for three years. Such material that would be produced before the authority at the relevant point of time, would be considered by the authority as material in support of practice for three years. Therefore, we hold that the said requirement is not mandatory but only directory,” the Court ordered. .Advocates Utkarsh Kumar Sonkar, Rameshwar Singh Thakur, Vinayak Prasad Shah, Swapnil Khare, Arpit Kumar Oswal, Sakshi Pawar, Nishant Datt, Anuj Shrivastava, Siddharth R Gupta, Aryan Urmaliya, Arun Kumar Pandey, Vijay Raghav Singh and Nitya Nand Mishra represented the petitioners.Deputy Advocate General Brahmadatt Singh represented the State.Senior Advocate Aditya Adhikari with Advocates Satish Chaturvedi and Eijaz Nazar Siddiqui represented the High Court. [Read Judgment]