Prescribed Procedure Must Be Adhered For Filling Up Of Application And Examination: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court, on July 25, observed that not following the prescribed procedure in an application would disentitle an aspirant from seeking judicial review.

A Bench of Justices Hemant Gupta and Vikram Nath, in their judgment in Union of India & Ors. v. Mahendra Singh, set aside an order of Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court whereby the Union Government’s plea to reject the candidature of the present respondent was dismissed.

The Supreme Court allowed the appellants’ plea and observed that, “It is well settled that if a particular procedure in filling up the application form is prescribed, the application form should be filled up following that procedure alone.”

Facts

Employment Notice was published to fill up 11952 posts of Constables in the Railway Protection Force. The process of selection comprised of written examination. Para 8 Clause B of the Recruitment Advertisement gave the requirement of an application form and also that the said application should be filled up by the candidates in their own handwriting, in Hindi or English only.

The respondent in the instant case belonged to Other Backward Class category and had filled up his application form in 2011 in English. His signatures were in English. Such application form was accompanied with a self-attested marksheet of high school examination and other certificates. All such documents were self-attested and signed in Hindi. 

The respondent appeared for the written test in 2013 wherein he wrote the paragraph in Hindi on the OMR sheet, though in the application form, he had written it in English. 

Since there was discrepancy in the application form and the OMR sheet, the appellants obtained the opinion of the Government Examiner of Questioned Documents in 2014. The expert's opinion was that the signatures on the OMR sheet and on the xerox copies of the certificates were by one and the same person. It was also opined that it was not possible to express any opinion in respect of para written in Hindi in the OMR sheet and in English in the application form.

As the respondent was not appointed despite scoring above the cut-off, he approached the Allahabad High Court by way of a writ petition. The High Court remitted the matter back to the Government to reconsider the entire controversy. Finally, the candidature of the respondent came to be rejected on 27.1.2017 by the Competent Authority.

The grounds for rejection were stated as, “The matching of writing of the petitioner failed due to mistake of the petitioner himself since he used two languages. Similarly, the matching of the signatures failed, since the petitioner did his signature on the application form in English whereas on the OMR Sheet in Hindi, which is fault of the petitioner.”

Another writ petition was preferred which assailed the order of the decision of the Competent Authority. Such decision was set aside by the High Court and it was later upheld by the Division Bench.

Hence, the Union of India preferred the present appeal.

Contentions

ASG Madhavi Divan appeared on behalf of the appellant and argued that the use of different language in the application form than what is used in the OMR sheet by itself entails rejection of the candidature.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan appeared on behalf of the respondent and argued that use of a different language is only an irregularity, though it is admitted that the purpose of using the same language is to avoid impersonation and to ascertain the genuineness of the candidate.

Decision

The Court rejected the reasoning of the Division Bench that the time gap between the filling up of the application form and the examination led to the inadvertent filling up of OMR sheet in Hindi by the writ petitioner and noted that it was based on surmises and conjectures.

“Once the writ petitioner has filled the application form in English, having also signed in English, it cannot be said to be an inadvertent mistake when he has written the para in Hindi. Such writing in different language violates the instruction clearly mentioned in the advertisement,” the Court observed.

Court cited its judgment in Cherukuri Mani v. Chief Secretary, Government of Andhra Pradesh & Ors (2015) 13 SCC 722, wherein it was held that, “14. Where the law prescribes a thing to be done in a particular manner following a particular procedure, it shall be done in the same manner following the provisions of law, without deviating from the prescribed procedure....”

In the light of the above, the order passed by the High Court was held as unsustainable in law, was set aside and consequently the candidature of the respondent was rejected.