IMPORTANT POINTS
Persons obtaining appointment by fraudulent means are not entitled to hold the office.
If an appointment is held illegal and void having been obtained by fraudulent means the next person in merit should be appointed.

JUDGMENT

Shiva Kirti Singh, J.

1. The Civil Appeal and the Special Leave Petition have been heard together because claim of the parties is in respect of same post of Chief Inspector in the Haryana Roadways to which the appellant - Khub Ram was initially appointed in the year 1990 pursuant to his selection in response to advertisement dated 07.05.1989. First respondent – Dalbir Singh challenged the selection and appointment of appellant Khub Ram by filing C.W.P. No.12711 of 1992 in the High Court. That writ petition was allowed on 01.10.2010 by a learned Single Judge. Not only the appointment of Khub Ram and one more person was quashed but a direction was also issued to appoint writ petitioner – Dalbir Singh from a retrospective date with all consequential benefits. Appellant’s appeal before the Division Bench was dismissed by the impugned order. The petitioner of S.L.P. – Mahavir Prasad has sought permission to file the Special Leave Petition against judgment of learned Single Judge as well as of Division Bench on the ground that he is one amongst the selected candidates and has a better claim for appointment than respondent – Dalbir Singh and hence order should be passed for appointing him in place of Khub Ram. This judgment shall govern both the matters which involve common issues of facts and law.

2. Permission to file Special Leave Petition (C) No.15871 of 2012 is granted. Delay condoned. Leave granted.

3. For the sake of convenience the facts have been noticed mainly from the records of Civil Appeal No.2734 of 2012 except where indicated otherwise. For deciding the two issues arising in these cases it is not necessary to go deeper into the facts except to notice that as per terms of advertisement dated 07.05.1989, besides a Degree of Graduation and Hindi upto Matriculation level and age qualification of 17-35 years, it was essential for the candidate to have two years’ experience in Government/Semi-government or Public Undertakings and Roadways Fleet. The appellant’s selection was questioned in the writ petition mainly on the ground that he did not possess the requisite experience and the two certificates submitted by him were from private transporters. There were strong arguments advanced against the selection of appellant and some others on the allegation that political influence had been exercised in their favour and it was specifically pleaded that the appellant was selected in the second round of selection as he belonged to village of the then Chief Minister. The learned Single Judge noticed that appellant’s experience certificates showed that he had worked with a private Bus Service from June 1986 to June 1988 as a Field Staff (Checker) for two years and also with another private roadways as Assistant Manager between 01.09.1984 to 10.03.1987. The courts below noticed that both the certificates contradicted each other because between June 1986 to 10.03.1987 the appellant as per his certificates had worked in two different capacities with two different private bus service. The court also found that the two years’ experience as per terms of the advertisement could not be satisfied by showing experience of working with private transporters as they were not covered by the expression ‘Government/Semi-government or Public Undertakings and Roadways Fleet’.

4. On behalf of Mahavir Prasad it has been pleaded that the Select List contained names of 14 persons which included Khub Ram and Ram Niwas Rathi whose appointments were quashed by the learned Single Judge as well as name of appellant – Mahavir Prasad but not that of first respondent – Dalbir Singh. On account of his place in the Select List Mahavir Prasad represented for appointment and ultimately filed a writ petition for that purpose bearing C.W.P. No.17600 of 1991 but no relief was given to him by the final order dated 04.08.1992 which for some reason was challenged by the State of Haryana before the Division Bench but not by Mahavir Prasad. But when he learnt that respond