The Supreme Court on Wednesday indicated it may appoint a retired judge to examine answer-sheets of over 600 candidates who appeared in 2014 Delhi Judicial Service main exam to ascertain if anyone could be called for final interview before appointment.
Indicating the course of action it was contemplating to take, the apex court bench of Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Prafulla C. Pant asked the Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh to seek instructions from Delhi high court - that had conducted the exam - on this count.
Making it clear that the exercise it is likely to undertake would not unsettle the 15 candidates, already declared successful and some of them have joined their duties, the court said the examination of the answer-sheets would be strictly on the conditions that were followed in respect of 15 successful candidate.
The court said those candidates who upon scrutiny would be found to be close to the successful candidate would be called for interview. If they succeed, they would be accommodated against 65 not filled vacancies.
In 2014, there were 80 vacancies but only 15 could be filled up as only 15 candidates succeeded in main exam and they succeeded in interview also.
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The court direction asking ASG Maninder Singh to seek instructions from the high court came in the course of the hearing of a PIL by the NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) that has sought the quashing of the main exam result and re-evaluation of the answer-sheets by an independent expert committee headed by a retired judge of the High Court.
The NGO -- CIPL -- has alleged "unreasonable and arbitrary" evaluation in the Delhi Judicial Services main exam of 2014.
Challenging the main 2014 DJS exam on the grounds of "selection and evaluation" process being unreasonable and arbitrary" and in "violation of Article 14", the PIL has contended some of the candidates in their representation have said they were "toppers and gold medallists in their respective law colleges".
However, this contention of NGO was rejected by the court when it said in the last hearing on November 2 that "We don't accept Prashant Bhushan's submission that toppers will always be toppers".
For 80 vacancies of DJS exam 2014, 9033 candidate had appeared in the preliminary exam. A total of 659, who succeeded, appeared in main exams held on October 10 and 11, 2014.
Of the 80 vacancies - 55 were in general category and 25 in reserved category.
According to the results, declared on May 1, 2015 - eight months after the examination - only 15 candidate (13 from general category and two from reserved category) were selected for interview to be held on August 6 and all the 15 were declared successful.
