Now Reading: Bombay High Court Upholds One-Year Practice Bar For Fresh Law Graduates
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Bombay High Court Upholds One-Year Practice Bar For Fresh Law Graduates
Bombay High Court Upholds One-Year Practice Bar For Fresh Law Graduates
The Story in Brief
The Bombay High Court has held that fresh law graduates who enrolled after June 2026 cannot apply for the Civil Judge (Junior Division) examination because the Supreme Court’s ‘all law graduates’ direction must be read together with the one-year practice requirement. A Division Bench comprising Justices Sarang V. Kotwal and Ranjitsinha Raja Bhonsale dismissed petitions by Satish Patole and Jinesh Koli challenging an MPSC corrigendum of 23 October 2026. The Court said Paragraph 74 of the Bhumika Trust judgment requires every candidate to possess at least one year of actual practice.
The advertisement of 30 April 2026 invited applications from graduates who obtained degrees before 22 August 2025, deeming them to have completed one year of practice. The Court ruled that a contrary interpretation would violate the Supreme Court’s directions. The MPSC corrigendum closed applications on 9 November 2026. The petitions were opposed by the State of Maharashtra, the MPSC and the High Court administration.
Indian Opinion Analysis
The judgment rejects a literal reading of ‘all law graduates’ in isolation and ties eligibility to the one-year practice requirement that the Supreme Court itself deemed satisfied for graduates from before August 22, 2025. Fresh graduates who enrolled after that date are locked out of the current cycle. The MPSC corrigendum closes applications on 9 November 2026, leaving no time for petitioners to gain the required practice. The dismissal means the examination will proceed under the deemed-one-year criterion, and the distinction the Court drew between ‘law graduates’ and ‘candidates’ itself becomes the operative rule for future recruitments until 1 April 2027.
Source: verdictum.in
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