The Supreme Court has stepped in to clear the logjam in Madhya Pradesh’s civil judge recruitment, overturning a controversial order of the state High Court that had demanded a fresh main examination.
A Bench of Justices PS Narasimha and AS Chandurkar ruled that the High Court had gone far beyond its review powers when it reopened issues already settled. The judges stressed that the recruitment drive, first advertised on November 17, 2023, must now be brought to a close “at the earliest.”
The dispute traces back to the recruitment of 199 Civil Judge (Entry Level) posts. Rule 7 of the service rules was amended in June 2023, tightening eligibility: either three years of continuous practice as an advocate or exceptional first-attempt graduation scores—70% for General and OBC candidates, 50% for SC/ST aspirants. The amendment was contested, but the Supreme Court had already permitted all candidates to take part provisionally, subject to the final outcome.
When the preliminary exam results came out in March 2024, the cut-off stood at 113. Two aspirants who fell short—scoring 112 and 108—went to court demanding a recomputation of marks. Their plea was dismissed in May 2024, and soon after, the amendment itself was upheld as valid.
But a month later, in an unusual twist, the High Court revived the matter in review, ordering that ineligible candidates be weeded out, the cut-off recalculated, and a new main exam conducted. This sudden reversal triggered an appeal by the High Court’s own Registrar General and Examination Department before the Supreme Court.
The top court was unequivocal. It said the High Court had no business to use review jurisdiction as a back door to re-litigate issues already decided. Reopening the cut-off debate was, in the Court’s words, not just impermissible but something that could only be undertaken in an appeal, not through a review.
Equally, the Supreme Court underlined that the aggrieved candidates’ argument—that removing ineligible candidates might lower the cut-off—was built on mere speculation, with no factual basis.
With those findings, the apex court set aside the June 2024 review order and cleared the way for the stalled recruitment to proceed without further delay.