Appellants lacked a legal right to personal notification for document verification as per advertisement norms; negligence in following the stipulated communication method led to dismissal of their claims.

JUDGMENT :

M.S. Ramachandra Rao, C.J.

1. Since common issue is raised in all these LPAs, they are being disposed of by this common judgment. For reference we shall refer to the facts in W.P.(S). No. 3436 of 2023.

2. The appellants were all issued Admit Cards and they had appeared for the Combined Graduate Trained Teacher Competitive Examination - 2016 held on various dates between 29.10.2017 and 2.12.2017 pursuant to Advertisement No. 21/2016 published by the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission and had all been successful in the said examination.

3. Results were published on the basis of district wise merit list, but the same was challenged before this Court in several writ petitions i.e., W.P.(C).No.1387 of 2017 and other cases (titled Soni Kumari and Ors v. State of Jharkhand and Ors).

4. A Full Bench of this Court vide judgment dt. 21.9.2020 reported in (2020) 4 JBCJ 207 (FB) (HC) held that reserving posts by the State for those who are residents of particular districts of the State of Jharkhand was unconstitutional.

5. Thereafter this Full Bench judgment was challenged before the Supreme Court in Satyajit Kumar and Ors v. State of Jharkhand & Others. The Supreme Court decided the said case by a judgment reported in (2022) SCC OnLine SC 954 as well as orders passed in Contempt Petition (C) No.612 /2022 arising out of Civil Appeal No.4044 of 2022 (Soni Kumari and others v. K. Ravi Kumar & Others) and other Contempt applications.

6. Pursuant to the judgment of the Supreme Court further results were declared by the Commission subsequently between 30.09.2022 and 11.05.2023 on the basis of State wise merit list and they were then uploaded only on the website of the Commission.

The case of the appellants

7. The grievance of the appellants in the Writ Petitions filed by them was that they were not communicated personally and individually to attend document verification by the said Commission, though they are all qualified to be appointed to posts of Trained Graduate Teachers in Government Secondary Schools of the State of Jharkhand in the subjects for which they had applied.

8. Appellants contend that individual call letters were not sent to them, that the dates on which they should attend the document verification were not published in any newspaper, that no email or short message service (SMS) was also sent to the appellants by the Commission individually intimating them personally of the fact they were successful and should produce their documents for verification though details regarding their phone numbers and emails were already there in the application form submitted by each individual appellant in the Commission’s custody. However, they admitted that the results were uploaded on the website of the Commission under the caption “Important Notice” for programme of document verification. According to them, they did not appear before the Commission and produce documents for verification because they did not have knowledge of the dates on which they had to produce the documents for verification. They therefore sought a direction in the Writ Petitions to the Commission to consider their cases for appointment on the post of Trained Graduate Teacher in the co