Delhi High Court rules both serving and retired Group A officers with 5 years’ experience and law degrees can become Special Metropolitan Magistrates. Dismisses plea challenging selection of serving officers.
New Delhi: On August 7, the Delhi High Court clarified that both serving and retired officers who have held Group A posts for at least five years and also hold a law degree are eligible to apply for the position of Special Metropolitan Magistrates (SMM).
This important ruling came in the case was decided by a Division Bench of Justices C Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla.
The case arose when Abdul Aleem, a retired Director (Prosecution), challenged the selection of six candidates who were appointed as SMMs through a notification dated August 25, 2023.
Aleem argued that only retired officers were eligible to apply for the post, but the selected candidates were still serving officers as of the cut-off date, September 23, 2023.
However, the Court took a different view after going through various rules and documents, including Section 18(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), the Delhi Petty Offence (Trial by Special Metropolitan Magistrate) Rules, 1998, the online application manual, and the application form itself.
According to the Court, all these materials clearly show that both retired and serving officers could apply.
The Court stated,
“The position as it emerges from Section 18(1) of the CrPC and Rules 3 and 4 of the 1988 Rules, as we have already noted, is that (i) persons who were, on 23 September 2023, holding Group-A posts under the Government of NCT of Delhi or the Central Government, and had held such posts for five years, as well as (ii) persons who had retired from Group-A posts under the Central Government or Government of NCT of Delhi after having held such posts for five years, were both eligible to apply for appointment as SMM.”
In his plea, Aleem relied on the online application form and user manual, which included mandatory fields asking for the ‘retirement certificate’ and the ‘date of retirement’.
He said this clearly meant that only retired officers were allowed to apply.
The Court, however, rejected this argument and gave an important clarification. The Bench said that the presence of a red asterisk (indicating mandatory fields) next to the fields asking for retirement-related details only applied to retired officers who were filling out the form.
The Court said,
“It did not indicate that the opportunity to apply was restricted to retired officers.”
Because of this reasoning, the Delhi High Court dismissed Abdul Aleem’s petition and refused to cancel the appointment of the six SMMs.
The petitioner, Abdul Aleem, was represented by Advocate Santosh. The Delhi High Court was represented by Dr Amit George, Dushyant Kishan Kaul, Arkaneil Bhaumik, Adhishwar Suri, Rupam Jha, Medhavi Bhatia, Ibansara, and Kartikey Sharma.
The selected candidates were defended by Man Mohan Goel, Kiran Saini, Kusum Saini, and Alpana Pandey.
Case Title:
Abdul Aleem v. High Court of Delhi and Ors.
Read Judgement:
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