Public prosecutor in J&K must meet physical eligibility condns: SC

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has ruled that public prosecutor in the state of Jammu and Kashmir must meet the physical eligibility conditions like height, width of chest among others.
A bench comprising Justices Mukundakam Sharma and Anil R Dave have refused to accept the stand of Jammu and Kashmir High Court which had ruled that the lawyers have to do mental work and therefore stipulations in the advertisement regarding standard of physical conditions are not mandatory.
Jammu and Kashmir government in its advertisement dated March 24, 2000 and March 5, 2003 while inviting applications for the post of prosecuting officers in Jammu and Kashmir police had prescribed that the candidate must have minimum height of five feet six inches and width of unexpanded chest should be 32 and a half inches and that of the expanded chest should be 33 and a half inches.
Some of the rejected candidates who failed to meet the physical requirement approached the High Court challenging their rejection on the ground that physical qualifications should be relaxed.
The High Court allowed their petitions and directed the state government to consider them for selection again.
The Supreme Court while allowing the appeal of state of Jammu and Kashmir noted “The qualifications to be possessed by the applicants have been prescribed in the rules and also in the advertisement for the reason that some of them are required to be posted at high altitudes and therefore they are required to have proper physique to be able to be posted to those places.
There was no challenge to the constitutional validity of Rule 176 of the Police Rules so far as it relates to prescribing physical conditions regarding the height and the chest.” The High Court was not justified in going into the validity of the aforesaid criterion in the absence of any such challenges.
The High Court also has not specifically declared the rule prescribing minimum height standards and chest standards and therefore as long as the rule exists in the statute book, no such directions as issued by the High Court be issued.
Consequently, the directions issued by the High Court in the present case are required to be set aside.
“We allow these appeals and set aside the judgment and orders passed by the High Court and dismiss the writ petitions.” Rule 176 prescribes physical standards for the post of police inspector, sub-inspector and assistant sub-inspector. (UNI)