Other States - Madhya Pradesh   

Law students barred from taking exam

Staff Correspondent

To contest Public Service Commission eligibility condition for civil judges exam

BHOPAL: The final year students of the LLB course in Madhya Pradesh have been barred from taking the State Public Service Commission (MPPSC) examination to fill 240 posts of civil judges this year. This because the eligibility condition requires the students to file proof of having passed the qualifying examination on the date of filing the application for the examination.

For all other examinations conducted by MPPSC, the requirement of filing the proof of passing the qualifying examination has to be completed at the second stage -- at the time of the main examination. Contesting this anomaly, a writ petition under Article 32 has been filed by Archana Raghuvanshi, a final year student of the National Law Institute, Bhopal, in the Supreme Court. It would come up for hearing this coming Thursday.

According to senior Supreme Court advocate and former Advocate-General of Madhya Pradesh, Vivek Tankha, who has been engaged by the petitioner, the whole tale of confusion had been mentioned to the court in brief at the last hearing and the court had asked for a detailed petition. He also stated that this rule was being implemented for the last seven years and every year students were being barred from taking the examination.

Mr. Tankha said that MPPSC's approach did not derive any sanction from the existing civil judges (Recruitment and Conditions) Services Rules, 1994. Rule 7 of the Service Rules requires the applicants to possess all such details at the date of appointment which is subsequent to the date of examination. Because of MPPSC's anomalous eligibility condition, 1,800 to 2,000 students across the State have been prevented from taking the forthcoming examination. Nearly three-dozen of these students belong to the National Law Institute University (NLIU) here. According to the schedule fixed by the Supreme Court in the matter of Malik Mazhar Sultan v. Union of India, the advertisements for the civil judges examination should have been on the news stands by February 1, 2007, but for undisclosed reasons the publication of advertisements was deferred to February 26. To add to the chaos, the last date for filing the examination forms was fixed as March 1, 2007, NLIU students point out.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Law students barred from taking exam

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu