In a pivotal ruling, the Supreme Court of India has asserted that eligibility criteria or rules for selection to government jobs cannot be altered once the recruitment process has commenced unless explicitly allowed by existing rules. The decision was delivered by a Constitution Bench consisting of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justice Hrishikesh Roy, Justice PS Narasimha, Justice Pankaj Mithal, and Justice Manoj Misra.
This judgment, rendered on Thursday, follows a reservation of the verdict in July 2023 concerning the recruitment process for thirteen translator positions at the Rajasthan High Court. The legal contention was whether the criteria for public post appointments could be amended during or after the initiation of the selection process, a practice colloquially referred to as changing the rules of the game midway.
The Court reaffirmed the 2008 Supreme Court precedent set in K Manjusree vs. State of Andhra Pradesh, which dictates that recruitment rules must remain consistent throughout the process. It rejected the notion that this ruling was incorrect even though it did not consider the 1973 Supreme Court decision in State of Haryana vs Subash Chander Marwaha and ors., which held that achieving minimum qualifying marks in a public service examination does not guarantee selection, allowing authorities to set higher thresholds to maintain standards.*
The key conclusions of today’s judgment include:
- The recruitment process is defined from the call for applications to the filling of vacancies.
- Changes to eligibility rules mid-process are prohibited unless current rules allow it.
- Recruitment rules must align with the constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination in public employment, ensuring they are not arbitrary.
- Being placed on a select list does not confer an absolute right to employment.
The controversy began when the Rajasthan High Court’s administrative side decided, after examinations and interviews for the translator posts, that only candidates scoring at least 75% would be eligible for selection— a criterion not specified in the initial job notification. This led to only three out of twenty-one candidates being selected, prompting the unsuccessful applicants to challenge the decision initially at the High Court and subsequently at the Supreme Court.
The appellants argued that the imposition of a 75% minimum score after the examination amounted to an unfair modification of the selection criteria, a practice deemed impermissible by the earlier Manjusree ruling. A previous 2023 Supreme Court bench had suggested that a strict enforcement of the Manjusree decision might not serve public interest or the goals of an efficient administration, citing the Marwaha case which allowed for setting higher standards to maintain quality in public services.
Ultimately, the matter escalated to a larger bench to settle the discrepancies between the two precedents, culminating in today’s affirmation that recruitment guidelines must remain fixed post-advertisement to ensure fairness and transparency in government hiring practices.
