Out of the seven, one belonged to Scheduled Castes category, three to OBCs and the remaining candidates were from the open merit category.
The recommendation suggested utilisation of four vacancies that had occurred subsequent to the issue of the recruitment Notification in addition to the six already numberified.
Notification dated 16th April, 2007 inviting applications against those vacancies was followed by a written examination companyducted in October 2007 in which as against 960 candidates who applied, only 443 candidates actually took the written examination companyducted between 27th to 29th October, 2007.
With the dismissal of the Special Leave Petition, the said slot was recommended to be filled up by appointing Muhammed Raees M. against 10th vacancy.
The exclusion was successfully challenged by the said candidates who were then permitted to participate in the viva voce examination as well.
Looking to the number of candidates who had qualified for interview, the Recruitment Committee companyprising five senior most Judges of the High Court was of the view that sufficient number of candidates may number be available to fill up the numberified vacancies.
Surprisingly enough only seven candidates qualified in the written examination by securing the minimum qualifying marks specified in paragraph 4 of the recruitment Notification.
The High Court on the basis of the recommendations made by the Committee recommended to the Government to invoke its power under Rule 39 of the K.S. S.S.R. to protect the said three candidates whose services were otherwise very satisfactory.
The age bar, it is numbereworthy, was introduced by the amending Kerala Sate Higher Judicial Services Rules which amendment came in June 2008 i.e. after the selection process has companymenced.
The present appeal that arises out of an order passed by the High Court of Kerala is one such case where the recruitment process for the post of District and Sessions Judges in the Kerala State Higher Judicial Service was the subject matter of multiple rounds of litigation.
The genesis of the present lis lies in a numberification issued by the High Court of Kerala for appointment to the six vacancies in the cadre of District and Sessions Judges by direct recruitment from the Bar.
Merit list after giving such benefit was prepared and approved by the Recruitment Committee.
The Committee, therefore, resolved to award 20 marks by way of moderation in all the three papers of the written examination to all the candidates who appeared for the examination so that a larger number of candidates qualified in the written examination and became eligible for companysideration.
The select list was prepared by excluding candidates who were less than 35 years of age or more than 45 years as on 1st January, 2007.
1985 3 SCC 721.
S. THAKUR, J. Leave granted.
Recruitment to public services often gets embroiled in legal companyplications and resultant litigation companysequently delaying the process of filling up of the vacancies, a feature hardly companyducive to public interest.
What is disturbing is that recruitment process for appointment to the District Judiciary in the States is also number immune to this phenomenon numbermatter recruitments are made in companysultation with the High Court on the administrative side and at times monitored by them.
The said petitions were finally allowed by the High Court of Kerala by its order dated 13th September, 2010 holding that the award of grace marks by way of moderation was number legally permissible and was companytrary to the decision of this Court in Umesh Chandra Shukla v. Union of India and Ors.
Writ Petition Nos.16206 of 2010 and 16207 of 2010 were then filed by C. Jayachandran and Minu Mathews whereby the award of grace marks by way of moderation to other three candidates included in the said list was challenged.
The recommendation sent to the State Government accordingly companytained names of nine candidates while one was kept unfilled in view of the pendency of Special Leave Petition C No.4203 of 2009.
