Point of Law: If there are no rules providing for shortlisting, nor any mention of it in the advertisement calling for applications for the post, the Selection Committee can resort to a short listing procedure if there are a large number of eligible candidates who apply, and it is not possible for the authority to interview all of them.

JUDGMENT :

A.K. JAYASANKARAN NAMBIAR, J.

1. The State is in appeal before us against the judgment dated 27.11.2020 of a learned Single Judge in W.P. (C) No. 19153 of 2020. The brief facts necessary for a disposal of the appeal are as follows:

The writ petitioner was an applicant for the post of Chairman, Kerala State Pollution Control Board and he responded to the notification dated 05.05.2020 published by the State Government in that regard. The notification contained details of the essential and desirable qualifications to be possessed by aspirants for the post and they read as follows:

2. It is significant that the notification did not specify the procedure to be followed for selection of a candidate to the post. That procedure was prescribed by the State Government through a G.O. dated 18.06.2020 that constituted a three-member Selection Committee to (i) scrutinize the applications received by the Government pursuant to the notification and (ii) nominate a suitable candidate after conducting an interview.

3. The Selection Committee at its first meeting held on 25.06.2020 screened all the 23 applications that were received by the State Government and found 17 out of them satisfying the essential qualification requirements in the notification. It then decided to seek the Annual Confidential Reports (ACR)/Vigilance Clearance (VC) particulars of those candidates. At its second meeting held on 22.07.2020, the Selection Committee scrutinized the ACR/VC of the candidates and took a decision to not consider such candidates against whom disciplinary proceedings had been initiated or adverse vigilance comments recorded. It was also decided to assess the inter se merit of the candidates on the following criteria totaling 100 marks:

It was decided that those candidates who scored above 60 marks out of 100 would be called for the interview.

4. In the evaluation done as above 8 candidates scored above 60 marks and the Committee on 20.08.2020 interviewed them. The writ petitioner did not make it to the list of 8 candidates. After the interview, the Selection Committee nominated the 4th respondent for the post. It is the said nomination that was impugned by the petitioner in the writ petition.

5. The main contention of the writ petitioner, in his challenge to the nomination of the 4th respondent, was that the shortlisting procedure followed by the Selection Committee was illegal. It was contended that the petitioner had satisfied the essential qualification requirements in the notification and hence there was no justification in excluding him from the interview process that was an integral part of the selection process. A faint-hearted challenge was also raised as regards the qualification of the 4th respondent in that he was a person who retired as an Environmental Engineer whereas there were others who were functioning as Chief Environmental Engineers who were not called for the interview.

6. The learned Single Judge who considered the writ petition found that in as much as the Government had prescribed an interview as the method of selection, all the candidates who possessed the essential qualifications prescribed in the notification had to be called for the interview. In particular, it was found that the reduction of the number of candidates from 17 to 8 was impermissible since the 17 persons had to be seen as qualified as per the notification, and none of those qualified persons could have been excluded from the interview process that was specifically prescrib