An aspiring judge scored higher than several selected candidates in the combined written exam and interview, but was disqualified for falling half a mark short of a 25% interview cut-off - a rule Rajasthan itself later deleted. The Supreme Court holds that the rule was valid when applied, the appellant took a calculated chance and lost, and undoing a decade-old, fully implemented judicial appointment process now would be deeply unjust to everyone else involved.
"I worked hard and scored 64.4% in the written exam for Additional District Judge, well ahead of many others, and my combined score of 168 out of 250 marks put me at 11th rank out of 39 vacancies. But because I scored 7 out of 30 in the interview instead of the required 7.5, I was struck off the list entirely - even though candidates with lower aggregate scores than mine, like 158.5 or even 144, were appointed simply because they cleared that interview threshold. This cut-off rule was inserted midstream, after the process had already begun, and it directly contradicts what the Supreme Court itself endorsed years earlier - that there should be no minimum cut-off in judicial interviews, precisely because interview marks can be so subjective. And to add insult to injury, years into my fight, the State itself quietly deleted this very rule. If it was bad enough to scrap, why should it still be used to keep me out of the judiciary?"
Moral Universe
The narrative frames the case as a story of merit betrayed by an arbitrary, subjective gatekeeping mechanism - one that let a small, uncontrollable margin in a subjective interview override years of demonstrated legal knowledge and hard work reflected in the objective written exam.
Emotional Driver
A sense of deep unfairness and lost opportunity - watching a career-defining goal slip away by the narrowest of margins, compounded by the eventual, seemingly vindicating repeal of the very rule that excluded him.
Objective
To have the interview cut-off rule declared unconstitutional and void from the start, and to be appointed as an Additional District Judge based on his aggregate merit ranking, with full seniority and consequential benefits.
Blind Spots
The narrative's focus on the rule's eventual repeal and its apparent unfairness does not fully engage with the practical reality that he voluntarily participated in the entire selection process under the amended rules without objection, nor with the profound disruption that retroactively altering a decade-old, fully implemented judicial appointment list would cause to the many judges who have been serving - and building seniority - based on that settled outcome.
Inherent Tensions
- —The claim that the interview cut-off contradicts binding Supreme Court precedent (the Shetty Commission recommendations) sits against the Court's own clarification that those recommendations were guidelines, not a rigid mandate binding every state's statutory rules.
- —The demand for retroactive appointment based on aggregate merit competes with the doctrine of estoppel, since the appellant participated fully in the selection process under the known amended rules without protest before failing to qualify.
- —The argument that the rule's later repeal proves its original invalidity sits against the more measured legal principle that a rule's subsequent removal does not, by itself, establish that the rule was unconstitutional or invalid when it was actually applied.