Summary
A daily-wage Technical Assistant at Cochin University of Science and Technology applied under a 2010 notification for the regular post but was placed low in the rank list because the selection committee gave him fewer marks for experience, ignoring his daily-wage service. His writ petition also alleged that two selected candidates lacked the prescribed qualification of a first-class diploma in computer science with three years' experience in an engineering college laboratory. A Single Judge of the Kerala High Court set aside one appointment as illegal but declined to examine the petitioner's own grievance or the sixth respondent's eligibility, holding that the selection committee's decisions were not open to judicial review; the Division Bench affirmed. The Supreme Court remanded.
Issues
- Whether a High Court hearing a challenge to a selection committee's award of marks and assessment of eligibility may decline to decide specific pleas on merits merely because the committee has taken a decision.
- Whether the petitioner's daily-wage service should have counted as experience, and whether the sixth respondent satisfied the advertised eligibility criteria.
Provisions considered
- Article 226 (judicial review of selection), Constitution of IndiaWhere the decision of the selection committee itself is challenged on specific grounds — denial of experience marks for daily-wage service and a candidate's lack of the advertised qualification — the court must decide those pleas on merits; it cannot abdicate by invoking the limited scope of review over selection committees. (¶¶ 2.1, 3)
- Eligibility: first-class diploma (computer science) and three years' engineering-college laboratory experience, Cochin University of Science and Technology recruitment notification dated 24.07.2010The Single Judge must decide afresh whether the committee was justified in ignoring the appellant's daily-wage service when awarding experience marks and whether the sixth respondent met this criterion, permitting additional documents. (¶¶ 2, 4)
Held
- The Single Judge rightly set aside the fifth respondent's appointment for want of qualification but refused to consider the appellant's specific plea that his experience marks were wrongly computed and that the sixth respondent also lacked eligibility, merely because the selection committee had so decided; since the committee's decision was what was under challenge, the High Court was not justified in declining to decide those pleas on merits. (¶¶ 2.1, 3)
- The matter was remitted to the Single Judge to decide the writ petition afresh on both questions in accordance with law, allowing the parties to file additional documents within four weeks of the first hearing and completing the exercise within six months. (¶ 4)
Result
Appeal partly allowed; the judgments of the Division Bench (30.06.2016) and the Single Judge of the Kerala High Court set aside and the writ petition remitted to the Single Judge for fresh decision on the experience marks and the sixth respondent's eligibility within six months. No order as to costs.