Chennai: The Madras high court has directed the authorities to hold interviews at least in one place in Tamil Nadu, preferably in Chennai, for appointment of notaries in the state. Allowing a petition from the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, which sought to shift the place of interview from New Delhi to Chennai, Justice V. Ramasubramanian directed the authorities to consider the request of the petitioner so that all persons shortlisted (advocates) for the interview could come to Chennai.
The judge said many people from Tamil Nadu, who had applied for the interview, were invited to Delhi in April 2014 after their applications had already been subjected to preliminary scrutiny. But the interviews were cancelled in the last minute due to the notification for general elections, which inconvenienced many.
The authorities have now constituted an interview board and propose to conduct the interviews in Delhi from September 16, regarding which many applicants have reservations.
The judge said the authorities had a public duty not to repeatedly make candidates travel from Chennai to Delhi, putting them to hardship. “Only 20 per cent of the members of the bar corner 80 per cent of the work in the courts, 80 per cent have very little work left over. Therefore, to make everybody undertake a trip for a second time is not fair,” the judge added.
Rejecting the contention that officers of the Central government, who had other duties to perform, may not be able to spare 15 days to go out of Delhi, the judge said it was always easy for the government machinery to depute three officers to go over to Chennai to conduct the interviews for about a week, rather than asking nearly 1,000 candidates to travel to Delhi from all nook and corner of the state.
