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A Supreme Court bench of Justice R. Banumathi and Justice Indira Banerjee delivered a judgment on 24th July 2019, while considering an appeal in West Bengal Central School Service Commission vs. Abdul Halim and reiterated the principles to be followed by a High Court while exercising the power of judicial review under Article 226 of the Constitution of India.
A man, who had passed Certificate Course in Bengali from University of Delhi, applied for a job position, the advertisement of which read that the candidate “must have succeeded at any subsequent higher level of education in the language paper", but he was rejected on the ground that he does not possess requisite qualification as per the advertisement. The High Court allowed the petition and observed that since he had completed the Certificate Course in Bengali as shown by the Statement of Marks issued by the University of Delhi, he should be considered as holding requisite qualification.
The Apex Court observed that the High Court has lost sight of the limits of its extraordinary power of judicial review and said that the advertisement requires an examination in the language paper of a level equivalent to the level of the language as taught in the graduation level. Thus, the Court said that “any part time course conducted by a University is a plausible if not possible interpretation which ought not to have been interfered with by the Writ Court."
The Court reiterated the following principles of Judicial Review:
The Court cannot look into the sufficiency of the grounds in support of a decision to examine the merits of the decision, sitting as if in appeal over the decision. “The test is not what the Court considers reasonable or unreasonable but a decision which the Court thinks that no reasonable person could have taken, which has led to manifest injustice.”
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