IMPORTANT POINT
The Committee must provide a fair hearing before cancelling a candidate's appointment due to allegations of unfair means, as it acts quasi-judicially.

JUDGMENT :

1. The respondents in these writ petitions applied for appointment as District Youth Coordinators in the Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan[“NYKS” hereinafter]. The process of appointment involved their undertaking an online examination, to be conducted by the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection[“IBPS” hereinafter]. The written examination was conducted on 30 April 2019. Results were declared on 5 June 2019. The respondents were found to be successful in the written examination and were shortlisted for interview. The interview was conducted between 8 and 13 July 2019. A final list of selected candidates was displayed on 7 August 2019. All the respondents in these writ petitions figured in the list of selected candidates so displayed. On 16 August 2019, offers of appointment were issued to the respondents. The respondents accepted the offers. Police verification and medical examination of the respondents was conducted on 19 August 2019. Documents were required to be submitted by the respondents for verification on 20 August 2019. This was also done.

2. Pursuant thereto, orders of posting were issued on 20 August 2019 to 79 candidates. The respondents were not issued any orders of posting. They, therefore, represented to the petitioners on 23 September 2019 and 1 October 2019. On the representation eliciting no response, the respondents approached the Central Administrative Tribunal[“the Tribunal” hereinafter] by way of OA 3004/2019.

3. The Tribunal passed an interim order on 11 October 2019, directing the petitioners to consider the feasibility of issuing orders of appointment to the respondents. The order, however, could not be implemented and no orders of appointment came to be issued to the respondents.

4. On 28 November 2019, the NYKS issued an order cancelling the candidature of the respondents. The reason for this was, purportedly, because they had been found to have been using unfair means in the online examination which was conducted on 30 April 2019.

5. As the Tribunal passed no interim order, 17 other candidates, who had also participated in the examination, were appointed against the petitioners’ vacancies, vide order dated 6 January 2020. However, the respondents did not choose to implead any of the 17 appointed candidates as respondents in the OA.

6. Mr. Vineet Dhanda, learned Counsel for the petitioners, submits that the candidature of 21 candidates was cancelled, of which 10 approached the Tribunal.

7. Before the Tribunal, NYKS submitted that, on 16 September 2019, a complaint had been received from one Mohit, alleging that unfair means had been employed during the conducting of the online examination at the Shimla and Karnal Centres and that a large number of candidates from the said centres were selected. This, according to the said complaint, threw doubt regarding the fairness of the manner in which the examination was conducted at the said centres. This complaint, according to the NYKS, had been forwarded to the IBPS and the cancellation of the respondents’ candidature was pursuant to a report from the IBPS.

8. The OAs filed by the respondents before the Tribunal stand adjudicated by the impugned judgment dated 30 January 2020.

9. Aggrieved thereby, NYKS has filed the present petition before this Court, invoking Article 226 of the Constitution of India.

10. Re. cancellation of the respondents’ candidatures

10.1 Fundamentally, the Tribunal has proceeded on the basis that the respondents’ candidatures could not have been cancelled without informing them of the fact that it had been found that they had used unfair means, and affording them an opportunity to rebut the said allegation. Paras 11 to 15 of the impugned judgment of the Tribunal may be reproduced thus:

“11. It is here, deviation or departure took place. Though the offer of appointment was issued simultaneously to all the 100 candidates and the applicants have accepted the offer, their names were not included in the order dated 20.09.2019. In case there ex