A Supreme Court Bench comprising of Justices Mukundakam Sharma and A.R. Dave have said, “Judges should have basic computer knowledge at the time of appointment and a candidate who fails to fulfil the requirement can be denied employment. It is also to be considered that the Indian judiciary is taking steps to apply e-governance for efficient management of courts. In the near future, all the courts in the country will be computerised. In that respect, new judges who are being appointed are expected to have basic knowledge of the computer operation. It will be unfair to overlook basic knowledge of computer operation to be an essential condition for being a judge. Therefore, we are of the considered opinion that requirement of having basic knowledge of computer operation should not be diluted”.

The Bench ruled basic computer knowledge is a must for a judge when a detained candidate questioned the Supreme Court, “Who fails to fulfil the requirement, can he / she be denied employment?

Advocate Verma challenged the eligibility criteria adopted for direct recruitment of Civil Judges under Rule 8 of Uttarakhand Judicial Service, that a candidate apart from a law degree must possess a thorough knowledge of Hindi in Devanagari script as well as basic knowledge of computer operation. The candidate appeared in the preliminary examination and was successful. Thereafter, he did reasonably well in the viva-voice. However, he was not selected as he lacked basic computer knowledge.

Advocate Verma challenged his rejection before the State High Court which dismissed his plea, following which he appealed to the Supreme Court claiming it was unreasonable and no foolproof or transparent method was adopted to test the computer knowledge of the candidates.

The Supreme Court Bench dismissed the appeal and said, “We are of the opinion that possessing of basic knowledge of computer operation is one of the criteria for selection and in order to judge such knowledge, an expert on the subject was available at the time when the candidate was facing the interview board. In order to ascertain the candidate's knowledge of computer operation, he put questions and thereafter he gave remarks that the candidate has sufficient knowledge or that he does not have sufficient knowledge”.

The Times of India reports that the Court refused to comment on the standard of the test which determines the basic computer knowledge.