Haryana makes three years of law practice mandatory to appear for judicial service exam

In doing so, the state govt ended a two-decade-long experiment that had let fresh graduates enter the judicial service without a single day in court.

Illustration: Soham Sen | ThePrint

Gurugram: A law graduate in Haryana can no longer walk out of college and straight into a judge’s chair. The state government has notified rules making three years of practice at the bar mandatory for candidates appearing in the Civil Judge (Junior Division) examination, ending a two-decade-long experiment that had let fresh graduates enter the judicial service without a single day in court.

The Haryana government’s Personnel Department issued the notification on 7 August, and it was published in the Haryana Government Gazette (Extraordinary) the same day.

Signed by Haryana Chief Secretary Anurag Rastogi, the notification is titled the Punjab Civil Service (Judicial Branch) Haryana Amendment Rules, 2026, and comes into force from the date of its publication. The notification says that the rules were framed by the Governor of Haryana under Article 234 read with the proviso to Article 309 of the Constitution, after consultation with the Haryana Public Service Commission and the Punjab and Haryana High Court. They amend the Punjab Civil Service (Judicial Branch) Rules, 1951, as applicable to Haryana.

What the notification says

The amendment inserts a new sub-rule requiring every candidate to have practised as an advocate for not less than three years, counted from the date of provisional enrolment or registration with the concerned State Bar Council, as on the last date fixed for submitting the application.

To prove this, a candidate will need a certificate of practice. For those practising in the district courts, the certificate must be issued by the Principal Judicial Officer of the court concerned, or by an advocate of at least 10 years’ standing, countersigned by the Principal Judicial Officer of that district or station. Candidates practising before the High Court or the Supreme Court will need a certificate from an advocate of at least 10 years’ standing, endorsed by an officer designated by the respective court.

Time spent working as a law clerk or law researcher with a judge or judicial officer will also count towards the three years.

The amendment also inserts a new rule dividing the service into two grades, Civil Judge (Junior Division) and Civil Judge (Senior Division), and revises the provisions on pay, annual increments and the criteria for a Civil Judge (Junior Division) with a minimum of five years’ service to be designated Civil Judge (Senior Division) on a seniority-cum-merit basis. A new pay matrix, Appendix D,  has been added to the rules.

The notification also carries a revised pay structure for the service, mapping each of the five existing pay scales on to a new pay level.

The Civil Judge (Junior Division) entry-level scale of Rs 27,700-44,700 moves to level J-1, which starts at Rs 77,840 in the first year and rises annually to Rs 1,36,520 by the 20^th year.

The first-stage Assured Career Progression (ACP) scale of Rs 33,090-45,850 for a Civil Judge (Junior Division) moves to level J-2, starting at Rs 92,960 and climbing to Rs 1,36,520 by the 14^th year, after which the level tops out.

The second-stage ACP scale for a Civil Judge (Junior Division), which doubles as the entry-level scale for a Civil Judge (Senior Division), at Rs 39,530-54,010, moves to level J-3, starting at Rs 1,11,000 and rising to Rs 1,63,030 by the 14^th year.

The first-stage ACP scale for a Civil Judge (Senior Division), at Rs 43,690-56,470, moves to level J-4, starting at Rs 1,22,700 and going up to Rs 1,80,200 by the 14^th year.

The second-stage ACP scale for a Civil Judge (Senior Division), at Rs 51,550-63,070, moves to the highest level, J-5, starting at Rs 1,44,840 and reaching Rs 1,94,660 by the 11^th year, after which the level ends.

A footnote to the pay table specifies that the annual increment will be 3 per cent, calculated cumulatively on the previous year’s basic pay rather than as a fixed amount.

The amendment also substitutes Rule 9 to provide that a Civil Judge (Junior Division) will not draw the second and subsequent annual increments until the departmental examination is cleared, after which the withheld increments will be released from the due date, but with no arrears paid for the period before the examination was passed.

Supreme Court order behind the change

The amendment gives effect to a Supreme Court judgment delivered on 20 May 2025 by a bench of Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai, Justice Augustine George Masih and Justice K. Vinod Chandran, in a batch of applications in the long-running All India Judges’ Association case.

The requirement of three years’ practice for entry-level judicial posts was first laid down by the Supreme Court in 1993, in what the judgment refers to as the ‘second AIJA case’. The court had then held that recruiting law graduates fresh out of college, with no exposure to court work, was neither prudent nor desirable, since a judicial officer has to rule on questions of life, liberty, property and reputation from the very first day in office.

That requirement was scrapped nine years later. In its 2002 judgment,  the ‘third AIJA case’, the Supreme Court accepted a recommendation of the Justice K.J. Shetty-headed First National Judicial Pay Commission and directed High Courts and state governments to allow fresh law graduates, without any bar experience, to compete for judicial service, coupled with at least a year of institutional training.

Over the next two decades, high courts across the country reported that the experiment had not worked well. In its 2025 judgment, the Supreme Court recorded that affidavits from most high courts, including Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Manipur and others, flagged behavioural and temperament problems among judicial officers who had entered service without any bar experience, along with difficulty in handling court proceedings and complaints from advocates and litigants about how they were treated.

The court also had to decide from when the three years should be counted — from the date of provisional bar enrolment or from the date a candidate clears the All India Bar Examination (AIBE). The Bar Council of India had argued for counting it from clearing the AIBE. The court instead ruled that the period should run from the date of provisional registration, since a candidate is entitled to practice in the state from that date itself.

The Supreme Court directed all High Courts to amend their rules within three months of the judgment, and state governments to approve the amendments within a further three months. It also restored the 25 per cent quota for promotion to the Higher Judicial Service through the Limited Departmental Competitive Examination, reduced the minimum qualifying service for that examination, and introduced a 10 per cent quota for accelerated promotion from Civil Judge (Junior Division) to Civil Judge (Senior Division) through a similar examination.

The Haryana notification is among the first sets of state rules to formally incorporate the Supreme Court’s direction on the three-year practice requirement.

The court had made clear that recruitment processes already under way when the judgment was delivered would continue under the old rules, and that the new requirement would apply only from the next recruitment cycle.

(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)