Deciding Authority: The Supreme Court of India
Name of the Judges: G.B. Pattanaik & Brijesh Kumar
Date of Judgement: 19/02/2002
Facts: The Railway Recruitment Board, Bangalore issued an advertisement notice 4 of 1995 for recruitment to the posts of Junior Clerk Cum Typist. In pursuance of the selection held, the respondent was appointed as Junior Clerk cum Typist on 28.6.1996. After about three years of appointment, a termination letter dated 21.4.1999 was received by the respondent from the Railway administration. The respondent preferred a petition before the Central Administrative Tribunal challenging the order of his termination among other on the ground that the respondent was not responsible for any kind of irregularity and in case it was committed by the Railway Recruitment Board he could not be held responsible for it. It could not be said that each and every selected candidate was involved in it, if at all. Hence, a decision to terminate the services of all the appointees or to cancel the selection was bad. The other ground of challenge is that proper show cause notice should have been individually issued to each selectee so as to enable him to submit his proper explanation in respect of the allegations of irregularities, in absence of such a notice the termination order is bad being in violation of principles of natural justice. With the above findings the termination order was set aside by the Central Administrative Tribunal. The appellants, Union of India and others have impugned the judgment and order dated July 18, 2002 passed by the High Court of Andhra Pradesh, dismissing their writ petition assailing the order passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal by which the Tribunal had set aside the termination of the services of the respondent.
Judgement: To find out the position in the present case, the Court may have to scrutinize the report of the CBI. It first indicates that Railway Recruitment Board, Bangalore has not laid down any set procedure for holding of selection. The Chairman engages a printer for printing of the question paper and computer firms are given the job of scrutinizing the applications. The examination is conducted at different centres and answer-sheets are sealed and put in boxes in custody of the Chairman in his room. The answer-sheets are given to the computer firm for evaluation. The Board carries on a manual random check of the answer-sheets, and depending upon the result, further call letters are prepared by the computer firm. Since it was a recruitment for the post of Junior Clerk-cum-Typist, a candidate was required to have a typing speed of 30 words per minute in English or 25 words per minute in Hindi. As per relevant Circular the typing test is to be conducted after the written test and those who qualify in the typing test also, they alone are to be called for final interview. In the present case, however, according to the report the candidates during the course of their personal interview were required to give typing test before the members of the Interview Board within the time limit set for the purpose. No separate marks were awarded for typing nor the typing sheets have been preserved by the Board. No candidate was qualified or disqualified on the basis of the typing test. About 100 answer-sheets did not bear the signatures of Supervisor/Assistant Supervisor in the column provided for the purpose. It however, bore the signatures of the invigelator but none from the said candidates is reported to be selected. According to the report, on scrutiny of answer-sheets of 109 selected candidates, a clear difference of hand-writing was noticed in many answer-sheets. Out of these answer-sheets 14 were particularly taken out for the purpose of investigation. According to the report, answer-sheet packets were stealthily opened and the answers were filled up in the blank space left by the examinees. This happened during the period the bags of the answer-sheets were in the custody of the Chairman. So far as the interview is concerned, it is reported that the two Boards constituted for the interview did not have technical personnel as its member as per requirement. Each member was required to award marks to the candidate in the individual assessment sheets provided to them and ;average was to be worked out but no average was worked out. The column for interview marks was later on filled up as per wishes of the Chairman and Member-Secretary of the Board and signatures of the non official members were obtained on the summary sheet later on. It is mentioned in the report that huge amount of money was taken for selecting the candidates but none is coming forward to indicate as to who and how much one paid for it for fear of being in trouble. It is further reported that non official Chairman of the Board made payment of printing of the examination paper etc. not to any firm but to one Gaja Raja Yadav. It may also be mentioned that according to the report a large number of applications were missing and postal orders of the missing applications were encashed and misappropriated and even before the closing date of receiving the applications, it started sending applications to the computer firm for their scrutiny. The C.B.I. has named five persons as accused in the report namely the Chairman of the Railway Recruitment Board, Bangalore, who is a non-official, the Member-Secretary of the Board, an officer of the Railways, one Shri Hanumanth Bhaiya, a Senior Clerk of the Railway Recruitment Board and Gaja Raja Yadav, the private person to whom payment had been made for printing of the question paper etc.
As per the report of the CBI whole selection smacks of mala fide and arbitrariness. All norms are said to have been violated with impunity at each stage viz. right from the stage of entertaining applications, with answer-sheets while in the custody of Chairman, in holding typing test, in interview and in the end while preparing final result. In such circumstances it may not be possible to pick out or choose any few persons in respect of whom alone the selection could be cancelled and their services in pursuance thereof could be terminated. The illegality and irregularity are so inter-mixed with the whole process of the selection that it becomes impossible to sort out right from the wrong or vice versa. The result of such a selection cannot be relied or acted upon. It is not a case where a question of misconduct on the part of a candidate is to be gone into but a case where those who conducted the selection have rendered it wholly unacceptable. Guilt of those who have been selected is not the question under consideration but the question is could such selection be acted upon in the matter of public employment? We are therefore of the view that it is not one of those cases where it may have been possible to issue any individual notice of misconduct to each selectee and seek his explanation in regard to the large scale widespread and all pervasive illegalities and irregularities committed by those who conducted the selection which may of course possibly be for the benefit of those who have been selected but there may be a few who may have deserved selection otherwise but it is difficult to separate the cases of some of the candidates from the rest even if there may be some. The Railway Board’s decision to cancel the selection cannot be faulted with.
Decision:
The appeal is allowed.
Sudipta Bhowmick, 4th Year, KIIT School of Law.
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