Haryana: Income criteria for selection of ADSJs challenged in HC

The petition filed by a Chandigarh-based advocate came up before a division bench of Justices S K Mittal and Mahavir Singh Chauhan on Monday but the court issued a notice to the HC registrar (recruitment) and admitted the case for hearing with the regular old cases as per its turn.

The HC had advertised ADSJs posts in Haryana on July 16 and the last date for submission of applications is August 31.

Appearing for the petitioner, senior advocate Sanjay Kaushal argued that even for the appointment of Supreme Court or High Court judges there is no such income criteria. He added that by amending the rules, the high court has enabled “only a particular class of advocates” and closed the doors for all those deserving candidates who are otherwise competent to appear for the examination. The senior counsel added that except Haryana no other state in the country has imposed this condition of minimum annual professional income for superior judicial service by way of direct recruitment. It was argued that the amendment is not only without the authority of law but is also contrary to the law settled by Supreme Court in plethora of judgments.

The petitioner was aggrieved by the notification issued by the Haryana government on June 6, 2014, and by the high court on July 16 this year which the petitioner said was issued “quite conspicuously” and was neither reflected on the high court’s website nor on the Haryana government website.

The court was informed that the qualifications laid down in the original Haryana Superior Judicial Services Rules, 2007, would reveal that no condition regarding the minimum gross professional income was incorporated in it.

Kaushal further submitted that the high court has committed a grave error in incorporating another unconstitutional condition of conducting of not less than 50 cases per year. He submitted that the high court, “lost sight of the practical condition that having the knowledge of law is a separate thing and procurement of work is altogether a different thing. In the initial seven years of practice i.e. the period required for applying for the post in question, for majority of the candidates, it is impossible to procure such heavy number of cases, which comes to almost one case per week.”