Setting of syllabus is at recruiting authority’s discretion: HC

Madurai: Setting of syllabus is within the discretion of the recruiting authority and no legitimate expectation could be claimed by candidates that the same pattern would be followed every year, Madras high court observed on Wednesday. The court made the observation while dismissing a plea challenging the direct recruitment process for the post of sub-inspector of police on the ground that the questions with respect to the effective usage of Tamil language, which was followed in the previous years' written examinations, were omitted in 2025.The court heard the petitions filed by two aspirants, B Gurusamy and S Anandaraja. The petitioners stated that the syllabus for part-B of part-II of the main written examination included testing the communication skills of the candidates in effective usage of Tamil and English language. However, in the question paper for part-B of part-II of the main written examination for the present year (2025), questions with respect to the effective usage of Tamil language were omitted, and the same was replaced with 10 psychology-related questions.They stated that the question papers for examinations conducted in 2022 and 2023 included 10 questions specifically related to effective usage of Tamil language. However, the pattern changed in 2025. The state submitted that preference was given exclusively for Tamil language in the Tamil language eligibility test conducted in part-I for 100 marks. Therefore, the knowledge and proficiency of the candidates in Tamil were already tested in part-I. Justice B Pugalendhi observed that, it is pertinent to note that the notification does not prescribe that the examination pattern of the previous years would be followed in the present year as well. The judge observed that the questions replacing the exclusive Tamil language questions are questions related to logical reasoning, which are also included in the syllabus of part-B. Therefore, even though the specific questions from Tamil language were not included in the question paper, the replaced questions were within the broad syllabus prescribed by the Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board. It was not the case of the petitioners that questions totally out of the scope of the syllabus were included in the question papers, warranting the interference of this court.However, it must be pointed out that a horizontal reservation of 20% is provided for persons studied in Tamil medium (PSTM) as per the notification. Therefore, it would be appropriate if exclusive Tamil questions are also included in the main examination, in future. The court hoped that the above suggestion would be taken into account while setting question papers in the future, the judge observed, and dismissed the petition.