Rajasthan Public Service Commission v. Lavanshu Sankhla 2026 INSC 444 - Public Employment - Recruitment
What is expressly prohibited by law cannot be circumvented through indirect means.
Legal maxim - Aliquid prohibetur ex directo, prohibetur et per obliquum - What cannot be done directly cannot be permitted to be done indirectly- What is expressly prohibited by law cannot be circumvented through indirect means. (Para 21) [Context: The Supreme Court held that for recruitment to the post of Assistant Prosecution Officer in Rajasthan, the relevant date for possessing the minimum educational qualification is the last date for submission of applications, not any later stage such as the examination or interview. Since the earlier proviso to Rule 12 of the Rajasthan Prosecution Subordinate Service Rules, 1978 (which allowed final‑year candidates to apply) had been deleted in 2002, candidates who had not acquired the LL.B. degree by the application deadline were ineligible, even if they obtained it before the exam. ]
Case Info
Case Information
Case name and neutral citation:Rajasthan Public Service Commission v. Lavanshu Sankhla & Ors., 2026 INSC 444
Coram:Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta
Judgment date:04 May 2026
Caselaws and citations
The extracted text of the judgment on this page does not show any cited precedents or case law names; it is a purely statutory and rules-based reasoning. If there are authorities, they are likely in portions of the judgment not included in the text you shared.
Statutes / rules referred
The Court refers primarily to:
- Rajasthan Prosecution Subordinate Service Rules, 1978, particularly Rule 12 (Academic qualification) and its deleted proviso.
- Rajasthan Scheduled Areas Subordinate, Ministerial and Class‑IV Service (Recruitment and other Service Conditions) Rules, 2014 (mentioned in relation to the advertisement).
- Reference to possible action under Section 217 of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita (as per the RPSC press note).
Brief summary (three sentences)
The Supreme Court held that for recruitment to the post of Assistant Prosecution Officer in Rajasthan, the relevant date for possessing the minimum educational qualification is the last date for submission of applications, not any later stage such as the examination or interview. Since the earlier proviso to Rule 12 of the Rajasthan Prosecution Subordinate Service Rules, 1978 (which allowed final‑year candidates to apply) had been deleted in 2002, candidates who had not acquired the LL.B. degree by the application deadline were ineligible, even if they obtained it before the exam. Accordingly, the Court set aside the Rajasthan High Court’s orders that had allowed such candidates to appear in the preliminary examination and allowed the appeals filed by the Rajasthan Public Service Commission.