Judgment

HANSARIA, J.:- 1 st of August of the concerned year has been fixed as the date with reference to which the eligibility of persons, desirous of sitting in competitive examination for recruitment to the Indian Administrative Service/Indian Foreign Services etc., qua their age for which both minimum and maximum is normally fixed is being determined. This cut off date had been fixed when the Union Public Service Commission had been conducting only one written examination which used to be normally after the 1st August. The Commission, however, felt the necessity of holding a preliminary examination which normally takes place before 1st day of August. Even so, the eligibility of the applicant, regarding satisfaction of the age requirement continued to be ascertained with reference to his age as on 1st August of the concerned year.

2. The aforesaid cut off date came to be challenged before various Central Administrative Tribunals, one of which is Central Administrative Tribunal at Allahabad. The Tribunal in its earlier decisions rendered, inter alia, in OA No. 778/91 and 881/91 on 19-9-91 did not find anything arbitrary in taking 1st August as the cut off date despite holding of the preliminary examination before that date. Indeed, in two OAs which had been filed by the respondent himself before the aforesaid Tribunal which were registered as OAs 168/90 and 1161/92 and came to be decided on 7-5-93, the Tribunal had not accepted the contention of the respondent that fixation of 1st August was arbitrary. A different view has, however, been taken in the present impugned judgment by the same Tribunal by holding that 1st of August as the cut off date is arbitrary. The appellants, namely, the Union of India and the Union Public Service Commission have assailed the legality of this decision.

3. That there can be no arbitrariness in fixation of even a cut off date is not disputed before us by the learned Addl. Solicitor General who has appeared for the appellant. This stand has been correctly taken, because after Art. 14 has spread its wing in the field of administrative law following what was principally held in Maneka Gandhis case, AIR 1978 SC 597, no stand can be taken by any administrative authority that it can act arbitrarily. Indeed, even before the decision in Maneka Gandhi, law was that no administrative authority has absolute discretion to decide a matter within its competence the way it chooses. This has been the accepted position and this Court had cited with approval what had been stated in this regard in United States v. Wunderlich, (1951) 342 US 98, the relevant part of which reads as below :-

"Law has reached its finest moments, when it has freed men from unlimited discretion of some ruler, some official, some bureaucrat. Absolute discretion is a ruthless master. It is more destructive of freedom than any of mans other invention."

3-A. Insofar as fixation of cut off date is concerned, the same can be regarded as arbitrary by a Court if the same be one about which it can be said that it has been "picked out from a hat", as was found to be by this Court in Dr. Nim v. Union of India, AIR 1967 SC 1301, because of which fixation of 19-5-91 as the date for the concerned purpose was held to be invalid.

4. As to when choice of a cut off date can be interfered was stated by Holmes, J. in Louisville Gas & E. Co. v. Coleman, (1927) 277 US 32 by stating that if the fixation be very wide of any reasonable mark", the same can be regarded arbitrary. What was stated by Holmes, J. was cited with approval by a Bench of this Court in Union of India v. Parameswaran Match Works, AIR 1974 SC 2349 in paragraph 10 by also stating that choice of a date cannot always be dubbed as arbitrary even if no particular reason is forthcoming for the choice unless it is shown to be capricious or whimsical in the circumstances. It was further pointed out where a point or line has to be, there is no mathematical or logical way of fixing it precisely, and so, th