Supreme Court upholds minimum marks/practice criteria to join Madhya Pradesh judicial service

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed petitions challenging the rules prescribing an eligibility of at least three years practice or 70 per cent marks in law graduation for entry-level judicial service candidates in Madhya Pradesh. [Garima Khare v. High Court of Madhya Pradesh and anr].A Bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and Prashant Kumar Mishra upheld a judgment of the Madhya Pradesh High Court in this regard."We are not going to entertain this. It took some years of learning and experience, which is why these rules were framed. This is to ensure better judicial candidates. Their (fresh law graduates) future is not doomed," Justice Roy remarked during the course of the hearing..The Madhya Pradesh High Court had on April 1 upheld the rule in question, leading to the instant appeal before the apex court.The High Court had reasoned the intent of the rule was quality-centric, so as to ensure that the best among the best are selected as judges. Further, the interest of litigants who approch courts for justice was far more important than the interest of individuals. The High Court had lamented that the standards for the judiciary have remained stagnant for decades without any improvement, while in all other professions, the standards have gone up.It had rejected the argument that the requirement was in violation of the right to equality before the law.The batch of petitions before it had challenged the amendment to the Rule 7 of the Madhya Pradesh Judicial Service (Recruitment and Conditions of Service) Rules, 1994, which was notified last year. .The Supreme Court today held it found no reason to interfere with the High Court ruling. It ordered,"Learned counsel has made elaborate argument to challenge the impugned judgment ... The justification given by the High Court to uphold the validity of the Rule has been taken into account. We see no reason to interfere with the said view. The Special Leave Petitions are accordingly dismissed.".Advocates Siddharth R Gupta, Mrigank Prabhakar, Sanjay Singh, Shantanu Sharma, Swapnil Khare, Garvita Jain, Abhir Lot, and Amisha Devi appeared for the petitioners..Read our detailed piece on the Madhya Pradesh High Court judgment here..[Read order]