New Delhi: In a significant ruling, the Supreme Court on Thursday declared that "the rules of the game" governing the selection to government jobs cannot be changed midway or after the process of recruitment starts unless the rules permit it.
The verdict was delivered by a bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and comprising Justices Hrishikesh Roy, PS Narasimha, Pankaj Mithal and Manoj Misra. The bench said “the rules of the game" for recruitment can't be changed mid-way through the selection process. The apex court made it clear that while the recruiting body can lay down separate benchmarks for different stages, it cannot change the criteria after that stage is over.
The bench said if a change is permissible under the extant rules or advertisement, the change would have to meet the requirement of Article 14 of the Constitution and satisfy the test of non-arbitrariness.
The bench emphasized that the recruiting bodies subject to the extant rules may formulate appropriate procedure to bring the recruitment process to a logical end. The apex court said that the procedure adopted for the process should be transparent and non-arbitrary. The detailed judgment will be uploaded later in the day.
A three-judge bench had referred the issue to the five-judge bench in the case Tej Prakash Pathak and others v. Rajasthan High Court and others (2013).
The apex court had doubted the correctness of an earlier decision K. Manjusree v. State of Andhra Pradesh and another (2008). In the 2008 decision, the apex court held that the selection criteria cannot be changed midway through the process as "it would amount to changing the rules of the game after the game was played which is clearly impermissible".
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