CHENNAI: All the

,562 lawyers, pleaders, assistant public prosecutors and serving judicial officers who wrote the preliminary examination for appointment as district judges in

have flunked. All those who took the test conducted by the state Judicial Services Recruitment Board on April 6 have at least seven years at the Bar. Puducherry was no different – all the 558 candidates from the Union territory too flunked the exam.

Red-faced advocates, however, took to social media posing a counter-question: Does an advocate need to know whose larger-than-life portrait hangs in the Chief Justice's court in the Madras high court to become a district judge? Lawyers blamed the poor showing on vague, unclear, twisted, indirect questions and negative marking.

Candidates flag irrelevant questions

V Vasanthakumar, who has 13 years at the Bar and was one of the candidates who failed, said: “They expected us to solve an entire case by providing a single word answer, that too from the four options provided in the question paper. It is practically impossible. A descriptive question can be answered only comprehensively.”

J Kumaran, another candidate, who is also an additional government pleader for Puducherry in the high court, said: “There was a question asking how the knot in the noose should be made while executing a death sentence ordered by a court.” Another one was about the first aid to be provided to an accident victim. I don’t understand how these questions are relevant, Kumaran said. “I appeared for the 2013 exam, it was not like this. Though it was also tough, it had relevant questions which could be answered by a practising lawyer,” added Kumaran, who has15 years of experience.

Another lawyer with 18 years of experience, who was not willing to be named, said: “In chemistry, maths or physics, the answers for a particular question would be universal. There cannot be two answers. But in law, it depends on interpretation of provisions. Each case is a concept and the answers cannot be the same. That is the reason several stages of appeals are allowed against judicial orders.”

For instance, in the Sabarimala case, it was a 4:1 verdict. Not all the judges of the bench agreed to a single concept. “How can they expect us to arrive at the particular concept acceptable to the person who set the question,” he asked.

Pointing out that not even a single judicial officer in the cadre of sub-judges and judicial magistrates, who took the exam, had cleared it, the advocate asked, “Does it mean they are ineligible to adjudicate cases in their present capacity.” When TOI asked for a reponse, C Kumarappan, registrar general of the high court, said, “Recruitments are handled by registrar (recruitment). Though I am the registrar-general, I am not in a position to comment without relevant papers.”