IMPORTANT POINT
Appointment – Orders of Court cannot be allowed to operate at conflict with requirements of merit – Any eventuality leading to advantage of less meritorious candidates at the cost of meritorious one has to be eschewed.

ORDER :

Dinesh Maheshwari, J.

1. We have heard learned counsel for the parties in relation to the applications seeking clarification/modification of the judgment and order dated 01.09.2021 passed by this Court in Civil Appeal Nos. 5065-5095 of 2021 arising out of Special Leave Petition (C) Nos. 25184-25214 of 2018 and in relation to Contempt Petition (C) Nos. 888-918 of 2021 and 11 of 2022 as also various other applications for intervention/direction/clarification, as filed by the cross-section of candidates and the Haryana Staff Selection Commission (for short ‘the Commission’).

2. The relevant background aspects of the matter are that the Commission had issued an advertisement inviting applications for appointment to the post of Post-Graduate Teachers in different disciplines for which, the candidate was required to possess the qualification of B.Ed. The advertisement was issued on 28.06.2015 and the last date for submission of online application form was 12.10.2015. The requirement had been that on the date of submission of the application, the candidate ought to possess B.Ed. degree.

3. The genesis of dispute leading to the present scenario had been in the fact that some of the candidates had appeared in B.Ed. examination of the respective universities and though their final result had not been declared but, on request, they were provided with the provisional/confidential result of B.Ed. examination by the respective universities before 12.10.2015. These candidates applied in pursuance of the advertisement aforesaid. However, at the time of screening, their candidature was rejected by the Commission only on the ground that the result of their B.Ed. course had not been finally declared by the respective universities prior to the cut-off date, i.e., 12.10.2015; and they could not have applied on the basis of the alleged provisional/confidential result.

4. Such rejection of candidature was challenged by some of these candidates and the batch of writ petitions led by CWP No. 2701 of 2016 was decided by a learned Single Judge of Punjab and Haryana High Court on 23.10.2017. The learned Single Judge was of the view that the result obtained by the writ petitioners could not have been considered invalid, as the same was obtained not from any other source but from the university itself. The learned Single Judge disapproved the rejection of candidature of writ petitioners and issued directions in the following terms: -

“Hence, in view of what has been stated hereinabove, as also as per the ratio of the Division Bench judgment in CWP no.9533 of 2001, “Ankita Beniwal vs. Haryana Public Service Commission”, these petitions are allowed and the respondent Commission is directed to interview the petitioners if they otherwise come within the zone of selection as per the marks obtained by the last candidate, in each category in which the petitioners have applied, provided of course that the result in the case of each petitioner, in the examination concerned, was disclosed by the respondent University prior to the cut off date, i.e. 12.10.2015 as per the corrigendum Annexure P-2.”

5. The Division Bench of the High Court endorsed the views of the learned Single Judge and found that the candidates who had obtained provisional/confidential result before the cut-off date were eligible to be considered in the selection process in question. The Division Bench, inter alia, observed and held as under: -

“……However, the fact remains that all the petitioners had qualified the B.Ed. examination and they were eligible to apply for appointment to the post of Post Graduate Teacher. Ultimately marks could be considered at the time of interview and if it affects the merits, the same can be taken into consideration. In any case, the final result was also declared on 5.11.2015 i.e. before the Screening Test, which took place on 6.3.2016, i.e. much before the dat