Allahabad HC Permits Civil Judge (JD) Candidate Who Applied Under Wrong Category To Provisionally Appear In Mains Exam

In an interim relief, the Allahabad High Court on Monday permitted a candidate, who applied under the wrong category, to write the mains examination of the UP Judicial Service Civil Judge (Junior Division) Examination-2022, which is to be held from today onwards.

The bench of Justice Saumitra Dayal Singh and Justice Rajendra Kumar-IV, however, clarified that the petitioner was being allowed in the examination provisionally, subject to the final outcome of the present writ petition and directed that the final result of the petitioner should not be declared except with leave of the Court.

Essentially, the Court was dealing with the writ plea filed by one Pankhudi Agarwal, who, while filling up the form for preliminary examination, by mistake, applied as 'Dependent of Freedom Fighter' (for short "DFF") though she belongs to Economically Weaker Section (for short "EWS") category.

Upon qualifying for the preliminary examination, she realised her mistake and tried to fill up the form as an EWS category candidate, however, the said correction was not allowed. Though, it was an admitted fact that obtained more than the cut-off marks under the EWS category.

Therefore, she moved to the High Court on the ground that as per Note 6 of Clause 7 pertaining to reservation under Advertisement No.A-5/E-1/2022, the Commission could not have cancelled her candidature as she did not make any false or misleading claim as may invite action under sub Clause 18 of Clause 11 of the above advertisement. 

In view of this, the Court said that Prima-facie, the matter requires serious consideration and hence, the Court provisionally allowed the petitioner to write the mains exam.

Since the issue involved is purely legal, the counsel for the Commission prayed for and was granted two weeks' time to file a counter affidavit.

The petitioner was given the liberty to file a rejoinder affidavit within one week thereafter.

With this, the Court posted the matter for hearing on July 10, 2023, in the top ten cases.

Appearances

Counsel for Petitioner: Prabhav Srivastava

Counsel for Respondent: C.S.C., M.N. Singh

Case title - Pankhudi Agarwal vs. State Of U.P. And 2 Others [WRIT - A No. - 8882 of 2023]

Click Here To Read/Download Order