The central legal point established in the judgment is the interpretation of the validity of OBC certificates and the requirement for a 'latest certificate' as per rules, considering the advertisement conditions, guidelines, and relevant case laws.

JUDGMENT

1. Counsel for the petitioners submitted that the issue involved in this writ petition has been considered and decided by the Coordinate Bench of this court at Principal Seat Jodhpur in the matter of Kailash Kumar v. State of Rajasthan (S.B. Civil Writ Petition No.2505/2022) wherein on 23.02.2022, the following order was passed:-

"As the facts of all the cases are essentially similar except dates of certificates involved, facts in the case of Kailash Kumar (S.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 2505/2022) are being taken into consideration.

These writ petitions have been filed by the petitioners aggrieved against the non-inclusion of their names in the provisional merit list for recruitment of Nurse/Compounder Junior Grade vide advertisement No.1/2021 for Non-TSP area and seeking a direction to the respondents to consider them as eligible as OBC Non- Creamy Layer (NCL)/MBC candidates.

An advertisement dated 17.6.2021 (Annex.3) was issued by the respondents for the recruitment. The petitioners filled up the application form inter alia claiming their status as OBC (NCL)/MBC candidates.

The respondents issued public notice dated 18.10.2021, requiring the candidates whose name had appeared in the list of candidates qualified for Nurse/Compounder vacancy in OBC category/MBC to appear for document verification.

The petitioners claim that during course of document verification, OBC certificates issued on 13.10.2018 and 3.9.2021 (Annex.2 and Annex.7 respectively), were produced by the petitioner along with other requisites. However, in the provisional merit list, the name of the petitioner did not appear.

A notice (Annex.9) was published by the respondents calling for objections to the provisional merit list requiring the candidates to personally remain present and raise objection along with proof.

The petitioner filed a representation inter alia indicating that he had produced both the certificates (Annex.2 and Annex.7) and that the guidelines issued by the Social Justice and Empowerment Department dated 9.9.2015 provided for the validity of OBC (NCL) certificate for three years along with an affidavit and produced an affidavit in terms of the guidelines dated 9.9.2015 also. However, as the petitioner apprehended that the respondents would not take the same into consideration, the present petition has been filed.

Learned counsel for the petitioners made submissions that the condition of the advertisement, provided that the candidates were required to produce 'latest certificate' pertaining to OBC, which was produced by the petitioner (Annex.7), however, as the requirement indicated was that the certificate must be valid on the date of application/last date provided for application, the certificate (Annex.2) was also valid along with the affidavit produced by the petitioner and, therefore, the action of the respondents in not considering the candidature of the petitioners as OBC (NCL)/MBC candidates, is not justified.

Reliance has been placed on judgment in Ram Kumar Gijroya v. Delhi Subordinate Services Selection: (2016) 4 SCC 754.

Learned counsel appearing for the University vehemently opposed the submissions. It was submitted that the clause 9.2 of the advertisement clearly provided that any certificate issued after the last date shall not be considered.

Further submissions have been made that when the candidates were called for document verification, they were required to produce all the relevant documents during course of document verification and as admittedly the affidavit in support of the OBC certificate dated 30.10.2018 (Annex.2) has been produced after the last date and after document verification, the same cannot be considered and as the petitioners have failed to provide valid proof of their status as OBC (NCL)/MBC, the petitions are liable to be dismissed.

Reliance has been placed on judgments in Raj Kumar Mahto v. State of Jharkhand & Ors.: WP(S) No.5572/2017, decided on 20.12.2019 by Jharkhand High Court and Gaurav Sharma v. State