NEW DELHI: A Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi expressed concern on Tuesday over the Kerala high court not finding a single candidate from the reserved category crossing the threshold of minimum percentage of marks for appointment as judicial officers in trial courts.The HC informed the SC that for the preliminary examination it had fixed 35% as qualifying marks and 40% for the main examination. Only three candidates qualified for the interview and none were found suitable for the post of judicial officer, it said.Over 2,700 candidates had competed for 45 posts of judicial officer and only 31 general category candidates could be selected, it added. The bench of CJI Gogoi and Justices L N Rao and Sanjiv Khanna said that in such situations, HCs should relax the minimum percentage of marks, maybe from 35% to 30% depending on the situation at hand. “It is surprising that in a state like Kerala you can’t find 45 candidates for judicial officers’ posts,” it said.Talking of the general scenario where representation of SCs, STs and other backward classes in services was below the level proportionate to their population, the CJI said, “For reserved category, HCs can relax minimum percentage of qualifying marks to give them representation in judiciary. Otherwise, reserved category candidates can never pass the examination and the posts earmarked for them will always remain vacant.”The CJI said minimum marks were being relaxed for reserved category candidates in examinations for recruitment in other services and HCs could examine this aspect to take appropriate steps. Data received by the law ministry from HCs last year showed that SCs comprised less than 14% of judges in the subordinate judiciary and STs about 12%.The percentage of posts of judicial officers for SCs was less than their share of the population, which stands at 16.6% according to the 2011 Census. Tribal representation is higher than their population, which is 8.6% of India’s total headcount. Women judicial officers constituted 28% of judges in the subordinate judiciary.