The cancellation of appointments due to tampered mark-sheets was justified, and the process of re-advertising the posts would disadvantage the original applicants.

ORDER :

HEMANT GUPTA, CJ.

The challenge in the present writ petitions is to an order passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Jabalpur Bench, Jabalpur (for short “the Tribunal”) on 17-10-2016 whereby the cancellation of appointment of the applicants before the Tribunal was maintained, but the merit list was ordered to be drawn on the basis of educational qualification, performance in qualifying examination, extracurricular activities, work experience etc. without conduct of interview.

2. The Original Applicants before the Tribunal have filed writ petitions against the said order passed by the Tribunal as also Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (for short “Samiti”) against the direction given in para 14 in respect of manner of fresh preparation of merit list.

3. The brief facts are that an advertisement was published for filling up of 62 posts in different disciplines called Miscellaneous Teachers. Such advertisement was published on 24-4-2012 (Annexure-P/1). The appointment process was in two parts. One is written examination of 140 marks followed by interview of 60 marks. In pursuance of the merit list prepared after conduct of written test and the interview, the appointment letters were issued on 12-9-2013. Admittedly, there is no irregularity in the marking of the written examination, but it is the mark-sheets of interview which were found to be forged and tampered. The allegation of forgery in the interview mark-sheets was referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation and on the basis of report of the Central Bureau of Investigation, the appointment letters issued to the applicants were cancelled/withdrawn on 14-1-2016 and 18-1-2016 but before an order of confirmation of the services of the Original Applicants was passed. Such order of cancellation was challenged in different applications before the Tribunal.

4. The Tribunal has found that it is impossible to segregate bad from good candidates as none of the original mark-sheets of the interview are available. Therefore, relying upon the Supreme Court judgment in the case of Tanvi Sarwal vs. Central Board of Secondary Education and others, (2015) 6 SCC 573, the action of withdrawing the appointment of all the candidates was not found to be faulty. However, the Tribunal directed that fresh merit-list be prepared by granting 60 marks assigned for interview only on the basis of documents submitted by the candidates on the basis of educational qualification, performance in qualifying examination, extracurricular activities, work assessment, work experience in terms of the relevant Recruitment Rules as well as advertisement.

5. The argument of learned counsel for the Original Applicants before the Tribunal is that the allegation of tampering the mark-sheets was in respect of 29 candidates and not the applicants, therefore, cancellation of their result is not justified. It is also argued that before cancelling or withdrawing the appointment, no opportunity of hearing was granted to the applicants nor the applicants were confronted with adverse material if any in the process of assigning marks in the interview. Therefore, the tainted candidates have to be segregated from the non-tainted ones in view of the judgment of the Supreme Court in the case of Inderpreet Singh Kahlon and others vs. State of Punjab and others, (2006) 11 SCC 356.

6. On the other hand, the argument of Samiti is that since the entire appointment process is tainted inasmuch as there is no original mark-sheets of interview available on record, therefore, it has been decided by the Samiti to re-advertise the posts rather than to re-assess the suitability of the candidates by interviewing them again. It is also contended that the process of interview could not be re-defined by the Tribunal as the conduct of the interview is part of the statutory rules. Therefore, the statutory rules cannot be superseded by an order passed by the Tribunal to conduct interview in a particular manner.

7. We have heard learned counsel for the