By Shaheen Parween
A bench of the Madras High Court dismissed a batch of petitions seeking relaxation in the upper age limit from 45 years to 48 for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) appearing for the district judge exam on a par with Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The petitioners argued that they too belonged to the reserved category and denying age relaxation to them would amount to discrimination under Article 14 of the Constitution. The second argument put forth by them was that they were claiming relaxation for the vacancies available in 2013 when the last selections were held. These selections were inordinately delayed and commenced in 2019. This deprived them of the opportunity to avail of the benefits in the selection process.
The bench of Chief Justice AP Sahi and Justice Subramonium Prasad, however, said that this issue had been finalised and attained finality with the acceptance of the Shetty Commission Report. It said that “the judgement in All India Judges’ Association and others vs Union of India is, therefore, a conscious decision on the Shetty Commission Report, which even having ta – ken notice of relaxations being available to the other Backward Classes in IAS recruitments, did not make any recommendations for such relaxation in upper age limit to Backward Classes in the judicial services”.
It further said that the equality clause cannot be inferred as uniformity in rules of relaxation because it was an admitted fact that SCs/STs had been placed on a different footing as compared to OBCs and the constitutional scheme also makes different provisions for both the classes.
The petitioners said that other High Courts had extended such benefits. But this did not cut any ice with the bench as it said that granting such benefits in other states would not render the rules in the present state invalid. It said that “under the federal structure of the Judiciary, there is no such All India Judicial Services in place and each State having its own independent judicial organization as envisaged under the Constitution, each of the States and its High Court having exercise of autonomy over such services are empowered to either extend such benefits or otherwise make some other provision of relaxation which cannot be pressed into service for an argument of invidious discrimination for providing relaxation in upper age limits”.
The bench also rejected the petitioners’ contention that due to the gap in the selection process of six years, they were deprived of the opportunity to avail of the benefits. The bench, relying on JS Yadav vs State of UP, observed that “a legitimate expectation can only be pressed into as an argument, provided there is an existing right. The right should be legally sustainable and should be an accrued one. A mere chance or an expectancy of appearing in a recruitment process cannot by itself be a right unless it is shown that it violates Article 14 of the Constitution of India or any other constitutional provision or legal provision”.
The bench said that the Court while accepting the Shetty Commission Re – port was not barred from further granting age relaxation up to 48 years but the scale of 48 years for SC/ST and 45 years for OBC was “a valid indicator of prescription”.