Supreme Court strikes down Rule 5A(3) of Bihar Civil Services (Judicial Branch) Rules

The Supreme Court recently struck down Rule 5A of the Bihar Civil Services (Judicial Branch) (Recruitment) Rules 1995, which provided for only ten percent of candidates appearing in the preliminary examination to be selected for the mains..The Supreme Court in Malik Mazhar Sultan v. Uttar Pradesh Public Services Commission had laid down the ratio of 1:10 of the total vacancies for calling candidates for the written examination. The vacancies shall be filled up by way of holding preliminary examination, followed by a written test and a viva voce, the Court had held..However, the Bihar Rules state that only ten percent of the total number of candidates appearing for the preliminary examination shall be called for final examination. The Bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Navin Sinha held that this rule is in violation of the decision of the Court in Malik Mazhar case..Besides being in violation of the Malik Mazhar ruling, Rule 5A of the Bihar Rules was also found to be arbitrary and unreasonable by the Court. The ten percent rule “substantially restricts” the number of candidates who can stake claim in the final exam, the Court noted..“The fixation of 10% of the total number of appeared candidates in preliminary examination to be called for final written examination is otherwise also arbitrary and unreasonable as the same substantially restricts the number of candidates to stake their claim in the final examination.”.The ten percent rule does not translate to the 1:10 ratio fixed by the Court for selecting candidates for vacancies. Therefore, the Court observed that restricting the number of candidates for final examination does not serve a “useful purpose”..Rule 5A is also erroneous to the extent that there is no minimum passing marks prescribed in the preliminary examination. The Court stated that all the stakeholders have been assured that minimum passing marks will be fixed for general and reserved category for future exams. However, the same exercise cannot be carried out for the present examination, given the fact that the preliminary examination has already concluded..The Court thus struck down Rule 5A(3) of the Bihar Rules and directed the BPSC to conduct the final written examination within six weeks..Read the Order: