The Court's interference with a selection committee's decision is limited to cases of illegality, patent material irregularity, or proved mala fides affecting the selection.

Dr. Sambuddha Chahrabarti, J.

1. Pursuant to an advertisement published in a Bengali Daily, the petitioner applied for the post of Guard of Gour Mohan Sachin Mandal Mahavidyalaya in the district of South 24-Parganas. He was requested to appear at the written examination on May 13, 2012 at Sonarpur Mahavidyalaya within the same district.

2. The petitioner alleges that he smelt nepotism and by a letter dated this he raised objection about the future appointment of Kausik Paik which he, allegedly learnt from the reliable source. According to him the interview would be an eye-wash.

3. The further case of the petitioner is that he had obtained the highest marks in the written examination and the selected candidate i.e. respondent No.6 obtained 19 marks and the successful candidate had been disproportionately awarded marks at the interview in order to cover the shortfall in the written examination. According to the petitioner the College authorities have not maintained the transparency in the matter of selection and the selection of the said Kausik Paik was known to him in advance and as such by the writ petition he has prayed for cancellation of the selection of the respondent No.6 and for other reliefs.

4. Thus the basic allegations of the petitioner are two in number. The candidate whose selection was apprehended has been selected and from this the petitioner has concluded that the knowledge which had come to him had been materialised and secondly the College Authorities had practised nepotism and in spite of his request did not keep any video recording of the interview.

5. I practically find no merit in either of the stands taken by the respondents. The allegations made in the affidavit-in-reply by the petitioner are not to be taken into account as very serious objection which has been raised against the College Authorities about the reception of these allegations to which the answering respondents could not, give any reply.

6. The sheet-anchor of the petitioner's case is the objection raised by him only two days before the interview that the respondent No.6 was going to be appointed. The objection is silent about how he arrived at the conclusion and what was the source of his information. This is necessary to assess the nature of the apprehension. Instead what I get is a vague statement as reliable source from whom he has come to know of it. He should have identified the source and should have mentioned in the writ petition. Nonetheless his apprehension matched with the final selection. Koushik Paik has eventually been selected. But without any positive allegation in any manner it will be inappropriate to set aside his selection for the concerned post merely because the petitioner made an objection.

7. It may so happen that some people may raise an objection about the selection of a candidate whom they considered to be the best. Merely because an objection has been raised or an apprehension has been expressed does not necessarily mean that the petitioners apprehension is a justifiable one. The letter written by the petitioner had nowhere stated the basis of the apprehension. Without such details a protest in anticipation must be held to be without any basis and speculative in nature. It may be a simple co-incidence that the candidate whose names were taken has been selected. But this by itself does not mean that the petitioner had been able to establish any alleged act of nepotism against the authorities.

8. The allegations about lack of transparency in the nature of interview process is also not substantiated by the petitioner. On the contrary, it has been submitted by the learned advocates appearing for the petitioner as well as the College authorities that for the answer scripts of the written examination an external examiner was appointed and the learned advocate for the respondents-College authorities, on instructions, had submitted that on the interview board the member from outside college had participated. This goes a