IMPORTANT POINTS
No adjudication can be made behind the back of a party.
Candidates participating in selection fully aware of the process, cannot challenged the process on becoming unsuccessful.

JUDGMENT

Dipak Misra, J.:-

In these appeals, assail is to the judgment and order dated 19.9.2003 passed by the High Court of Judicature at Patna in a batch of letters patent appeals whereby the Division Bench has concurred with the opinion expressed by the learned Single Judge wherein he had quashed the appointment of a number of appointees in respect of the post, namely, Medical Laboratory Technician (MLT) on the ground that the procedure adopted for selection was vitiated as the candidates were selected only by interview without holding any written test though the past practice was to conduct an examination and thereafter hold interview for selection; that the interview was held in a hurried manner; and that the posts being technical in nature, holding of an examination was warranted.

2. We need not state the facts in detail. Suffice it to say that in pursuance of an advertisement issued by the concerned department of the State Government, 182 persons were appointed on the post of MLT. The writ petitioners who participated in the interview could not be selected as they obtained lesser marks than the successful candidates. Their failure necessitated them to knock at the doors of the High Court and the learned Single Judge, as has been stated hereinbefore, accepting the grounds put forth, quashed the selection.

3. Learned counsel for the appellants have raised two principal contentions, first, most of the appellants herein were not impleaded as respondents before the High Court and without taking note of the said aspect the High Court has invalidated the selection and nullified their appointments which is violative of the principles of natural justice; and second, all the private respondents who were writ petitioners before the High Court having participated in the interview which was the procedure adopted, could not have challenged the said process in a court of law because of their failure, for the same is not permissible in law.

4. On a perusal of the orders impugned, we find that only 40 persons were made respondents before the High Court and hardly a few appointees filed applications for intervention. It is well settled in law that no adverse order can be passed against persons who were not made parties to the litigation. In this context, we may refer with profit to the authority in Prabodh Verma and others v. State of Uttar Pradesh and others[(1984) 4 SCC 251], wherein a three-Judge Bench was dealing with the constitutional validity of two Uttar Pradesh Ordinances which had been struck down by the Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court on the ground that the provisions therein were violative of Articles 14 and 16(1) of the Constitution of India. In that context, a question arose whether the termination of the services of the appellants and the petitioners therein as secondary school teachers and intermediate college lecturers following upon the High Court judgment was valid without making the said appointees as parties. Learned Judges observed that the writ petition filed by the Sangh suffered from two serious, though not incurable, defects; the core defect was that of non- joinder of necessary parties, for respondents to the Sangh’s petition were the State of Uttar Pradesh and its concerned officers and those who were vitally concerned, namely, the reserve pool teachers, were not made parties — not even by joining some of them in a representative capacity, considering that their number was too large for all of them to be joined individually as respondents. Thereafter the Court ruled thus: -

“The matter, therefore, came to be decided in their absence. A High Court ought not to decide a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution without the persons who would be vitally affected by its judgment being before it as respondents or at least by some of them being before it as respondents in a representative capacity if their number is too large, and, therefore, the Allahabad High Court ought not to have proceeded t