The Bombay High Court has refused to stay the written examination for district judge's post, which is to be held on May 21.
MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court has refused to stay the written examination for district judge's post, which is to be held on May 21.
Petitioner Anita Kataria and others had challenged the criteria used by the Law and Judiciary Ministry in short-listing the applicants for the post that the candidate must have secured at least 55 per cent marks in his/her LLB examination, and he/she must be an income tax payee.
The petitioners' argument was that these criteria, especially the one requiring the candidate to be an income tax payee, was discriminatory and it violated the right to equality guaranteed by article 14 of the constitution.
As per the High Court's earlier guidelines, 25 per cent of the district judge's posts have to be filled up from amongst the practising lawyers. So the ministry invited applications for the written examination from the lawyers.
The examination is to be held for total of 21 vacancies of district judges across the state. At present there are 18 vacancies, and three more are likely to occur by the year end.
Since the number of applications received was huge, there were 1,129 applications for 21 posts, the monitoring committee formed by the High Court to oversee the examination decided to shortlist the candidates.
Kataria and some other candidates were aggrieved by the criterion as regards the income tax, and challenged it in the High Court.
They also sought stay to written examination.
The petition first came before the division bench of Justices DG Karnik and Amjed Sayed, but it gave rise to a peculiar problem.
Justice Karnik pointed out that he himself was on the committee which decided the criteria for the shortlisting, so he could not hear the petition challenging the criteria.
Finally, a special bench of Justices RM Savant and Amjed Sayed was constituted to hear the petition.
The bench, in its Friday's order, upheld government pleader Ramesh Rane's argument that notification inviting applications for written examination made it clear that High Court reserves the right to shortlist the candidates, and in any case the criteria used for this purpose was uniform.
Though the court refused to stay the written examination or grant any other relief to the petitioners, the petition will be heard by the regular bench after the vacation.
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