Chhattisgarh High Court: recruiters can shortlist candidates even if no rule or advertisement mentions it

Candidates for Stenographer and Assistant posts in several district judgeships challenged a minimum graduation-percentage criterion the recruiting authorities had used to shortlist candidates for the written examination, arguing that since they met the basic educational qualification advertised, and neither the recruitment rules nor the advertisement mentioned any such screening, they had an unqualified right to sit the examination. Dismissing both writ petitions on 12 October 2026, Justice Bibhu Datta Guru held that meeting the minimum eligibility qualification for a post does not, by itself, create an indefeasible right to proceed to every later stage of selection.

Relying on the Supreme Court's ruling in B. Ramakichenin @ Balagandhi v. Union of India, the Court reaffirmed that a recruiting body can resort to shortlisting on an objective and rational basis even where neither the governing rules nor the advertisement says anything about it, so long as the applicant pool is too large for the authority to take everyone to the next stage — but if a particular method of shortlisting is already prescribed by the rules or the advertisement, only that method can be followed. Since the petitioners could not show the criterion here was arbitrary, discriminatory, or applied unevenly against similarly placed candidates, the Court declined to interfere with the recruitment process.