Retired Supreme Court judge and former Law Commission chairman PV Reddy will re-evaluate the controversial 2014 Delhi Judicial Services exam, ruled a Supreme Court bench of justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C Pant today (14 December).

The bench had ruled last week that the exam results should be corroborated by a retired Supreme Court judge.

The exercise should be completed within six weeks, said the bench.

The court made it clear that the re-evaluation exercise by Justice Reddy, a former chairman of the Law Commission, would in no way unsettle the already successful 15 candidates - 13 from general category and two from reserved category - and any successful candidate emerging from the re-evaluation exercise would have no claim on any seniority over the 15 already selected.

It said that in the case of general category candidates the parameter would the marks obtained by the successful candidates, and the same yardstick would be followed in the case of candidates in reserved category but this would be undertaken only if vacancies under reserved category are available.

In 2014 there were 80 vacancies but only 15 could be filled up as only 15 candidates succeeded in main exam and they succeeded in interview also. Of the 80 vacancies - 55 were in general category and 25 in reserved category.

One of the petitioners, the Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) was represented by Prashant Bhushan, while senior counsel Sanjay Hegde acted for other petitioners challenging the results, assisted by Fuzzail Ayyubi, AnasTanwir and Kanishka Prasad.

Allegations surrounding the exam included a breakdown of the toppers of the exam, the number of candidates who failed and a series of other discrepancies unearthed by candidates, as reported by Legally India.

DJS exam order