Unsuccessful candidates cannot question a selection process post-participation unless there was a prior protest; selection criteria must be transparent and correctly applied.

JUDGMENT :

Bharati Dangre, J.

1. Heard Mr. Ryan Menezes, learned counsel for the Petitioner and Mr. D. Pangam, learned Advocate General with Mr. Shubham Priolkar, learned Additional Government Advocate for respondent nos. 1 and 2.

2. ‘Rule’. At the request of the learned counsel for the parties Rule is made returnable forthwith.

3. The position on law by this time is well settled by various authoritative pronouncements that persons having participated in the selection process and taking a chance to get themselves selected, on finding that they have not emerged successful, cannot turn back and question the selection process, calling upon the whole process itself.

In Madan Lal vs. State of Jammu and Kashmir and ors. ( 1995) 3 SCC 486 , the Apex Court clearly held that the result of the interview cannot be challenged by a candidate who has participated in the interview process and taken a chance to get selected, once he finds himself to be unsuccessful, the challenge on his behalf cannot be entertained. The relevant observations of the Apex Court read thus: -

“Before dealing with this contention, we must keep in view the salient fact that the petitioners as well as the contesting successful candidates being respondents concerned herein, were all found eligible in the light of marks obtained in the written test, to be eligible to be called for oral interview. Up to this stage there is no dispute between the parties. The petitioners also appeared at the oral interview conducted by the Members concerned of the Commission who interviewed the petitioners as well as the contesting respondents concerned. Thus the petitioners took a chance to get themselves selected at the said oral interview. Only because they did not find themselves to have emerged successful as a result of their combined performance both at written test and oral interview, they have filed this petition. It is now well settled that if a candidate takes a calculated chance and appears at the interview, then, only because the result of the interview is not palatable to him, he cannot turn round and subsequently contend that the process of interview was unfair or the Selection Committee was not properly constituted. In the case of Om Prakash Shukla v. Akhilesh Kumar Shukla it has been clearly laid down by a Bench of three learned Judges of this Court that when the petitioner appeared at the examination without protest and when he found that would not succeed in examination he filed a petition challenging the said examination, the High Court should not have granted any relief to such a petitioner.

4. The said decision is subsequently followed in K.N. Sinha vs. State of Kerala , reported in 2006 (6) SCC 395 and also in the decision in case of State of Uttar Pradesh versus Karunesh Kumar and others , 2022 SCC OnLine SC 1706, and the position of law that the unsuccessful candidate cannot turn back and assail the selection process, has been reiterated. Though some exceptions have been carved out to the said rule, being when the candidate appears in the examination by recording his protest and participate in the process.

5. The aforesaid law laid down is based on the well-known Principle of approbate and reprobate, and in Karunesh Kumar (supra), the Apex Court has explained the Principle in the following words:

“Here is a case before us which squarely fits into the aforesaid principle of law”.

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