Court No. - 36
Case :- WRIT - A No. - 14760 of 2020 Petitioner :- Ved Prakash Respondent :- State Of U.P. And 4 Others Counsel for Petitioner :- Shikher Trivedi,Radha Kant Ojha (Senior Adv) Counsel for Respondent :- C.S.C.,Arun Kumar,Shivendu Ojha
Hon'ble Mahesh Chandra Tripathi,J.
Heard learned counsel for the petitioner, Shri B.B. Pandey, learned Chief Standing Counsel. Shri Arun Kumar has accepted notice on behalf of respondent no.3.
The instant petition has been preferred seeking the following reliefs:
"(i) A writ, order or direction in the nature of mandamus commanding the respondent-authorities to revisit the results after going through copy of the petitioner, and also after deciding the objection, so filed by the petitioner with respect to answers of the question Nos.26, 40 and 54 to make selection only after making proper scrutiny of results and maintain the same on the basis of merits as per Policy.
(ii) A writ, order or direction in the nature of mandamus commanding and directing the respondents to produce the revaluated copy of the petitioner before this Hon'ble Court so justice may be done with the petitioner.
(iii) A writ order or direction in the nature of mandamus commanding the respondents to issue appointment letter in favour of the petitioner after being found eligible and qualified in Assistant Teacher Recruitment Examination-2018 and one post may be kept reserve for the petitioner by providing all other consequential benefits as given to other qualified and selected candidates."
Dealing with an identical issue, this Court in Writ-A No.8697 of 2020 (Dharmendra Kumar Vs. State of U.P. And Another) held thus:
"
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Following the principles enunciated in the Full Bench decision of the Court in Rajendra Patel Vs. State of U.P. 2015 (8) ADJ 219 and the decision of the Division Bench in Km. Pooja Yadav Vs. State of U.P. [Special Appeal Defective No. 582 of 2016] the Court finds no ground to issue the writs as prayed for. In both the decisions noted above, the sanctity of a last date have been duly emphasized.
In Km. Pooja Yadav, the Division Bench had negatived an identical submission of a candidate being permitted to rectify the details set forth in the online form after conclusion of the selection process and held as under: -
"We note that the appellant does not dispute the fact that she had incorrectly filled in the column pertaining the marks obtained by her in the High School Examination in her online application form. She does not appear to have taken any steps for rectification of the said mistake till she was refused permission to participate in the medical tests which were held on 11 July 2016. The respondents assert that the recruitment process initiated for the purposes of filling up as many as 5,800 vacancies is complete and that they are presently engaged in the preparation of the final result. A direction issued at this stage would clearly result in hindering the process of finalization of the result in respect of a recruitment exercise which had commenced in December 2015. Any interference by this Court at this stage may also lead to further complicating the steps presently being taken by the respondents and not brooking a situation where similar complaints and prayers for rectification may come to be made. This Court, therefore, comes to the conclusion that no effective relief can be granted to the appellant at this stage of the proceedings."
The Court must bear in consideration that in public examinations where a large number of candidates appear and participate, granting of requests such as that made by the petitioner here would clearly jeopardize the entire selection process and interfere with the stipulated timelines for finalization of the recruitment process.
A Division Bench of the Court in Arti Verma Vs. State o U.P. and others [Special Appeal Defective No. 123 of 2014], the Court held:-
"Each candidate necessarily must bear the consequences of his failure to fill up the application form correctly. No fault can, therefore, be found in rejecting the application for correction when the candidate himself has failed to make a proper disclosure or where, as in the present case, the application is submitted under a wrong category. Interference of the High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution is clearly not warranted in such matters as it creates grave uncertainty since the selection process cannot be finally completed. Moreover, in the present case, the appointment was of a contractual nature for a period of eleven months. Hence, considering the matter from any perspective, the learned Single Judge was not in error in dismissing the petition under Article 226 of the Constitution.
The Special Appeal is, accordingly, dismissed"
Another Division Bench, also of this Court in Special Appeal No.834 of 2013, Ram Manohar Yadav Vs. State of U.P. and Others has held as under:
In Ram Manohar Yadav Vs. State of U.P. and others [Special Appeal No. 834 of 2014] another Division Bench of the Court observed: -
"If prospective teacher can not even correctly fill up the simple on line application form for his employment, it is obvious what he is going to teach if appointed. There are certain decisions cited on this issue. But none of them deal with this aspect whether under the discretionary jurisdiction of the Court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India such incompetent persons should be allowed to play with the future of the next generation.
Therefore, we are of the opinion that the petitioner/appellant should wait till he attains sufficient maturity and learns to be more careful in filling up the applications for jobs. The appeal is therefore, dismissed."
Learned Counsel for the petitioner has however sought to draw sustenance from a recent decision of the Supreme Court in Archana Chauhan Vs. State of Uttar Pradesh [Civil Appeal 3068 of 2020 decided on 2.9.2020] to contend that such a course of action would be legally permissible. In Archana Chauhan the Supreme Court observed thus: -
"Leaving aside the technicalities whether the point raised by the appellant arises out of the judgment passed by the High Court in Writ Appeal No.4070 of 2020, the peculiar facts as mentioned above are sufficient to accept the submission made on behalf of the appellant. We order accordingly and direct the Authorities to rectify the mistake committed by the appellant while submitting her application form after rectification.
The candidature of the appellant shall now be considered purely on merit."
As is evident from the extracted part of that decision, the Supreme Court in the peculiar facts of that case had permitted the appellant to rectify the mistake. Archana Chauhan cannot therefore be recognized as a precedent of universal application. In any case this Court is bound by the decisions rendered by the Full Bench and the Division Bench noted above, where this issue was dealt with in extenso and ruled upon on merits.
The writ petition is consequently dismissed."
For the reasons aforesaid, the Court finds no ground to issue the writs as prayed for. The petition stands dismissed accordingly.
Order Date :- 30.7.2021 SP/