The main legal point established in the judgment is the importance of submitting complete applications by the last date and the requirement for experience to be gained after acquiring minimum academic qualifications, as per the TPSC guidelines.

Deepak Gupta, J

These three writ appeals are being disposed of by a common judgment since they all arise out of one writ petition [WP(C) No.269 of 2015] disposed of vide judgment dated 18.12.2015 delivered by a learned Single Judge of this Court.

2. The undisputed facts of the case are that Advertisement No.09/2014 was issued by the Tripura Public Service Commission (hereinafter referred to as TPSC) on 22.7.2014 inviting applications for 3 permanent posts of Financial Controller(Group-A Gazetted) 1 reserved for Scheduled Tribe and 2 in the open category under the Public Works Department, Govt. of Tripura. The appellant writ petitioner Anirban Dasgupta was one of the applicants. Private respondents Debasish Naha and Shibabrata Bardhan were also applicants to the posts. As per the advertisement the essential qualifications were as follows :

“Educational and other qualifications :

Essential : Chartered Accountant or its equivalent qualification from a recognized University with a minimum of 4(four) years experience in the Audit & Accounts Branch of any Government Department/ Government undertaking/Public Sector Unit.

OR

Master of Business Administration (MBA) or its equivalent qualification from a recognized University with minimum of 2(two) years experience in Audit & Accounts Branch of any Government Department/Government undertaking/Public sector Unit Desirable : (i) Experience in Accounting procedure in PWD/CPWD/CPUs’/State PSUs’ etc. in Tally – Software.

(ii) Knowledge in Bengali.”

The last date for submission of application was 23.8.2014.

3. On 27.5.2015 the TPSC published a list of eligible candidates and only 11 candidates were found eligible. The name of the petitioner appears at Sl. No.8 of this list and the name of respondent No.7 Sri Shibabrata Bardhan appears at Sl. No.6 of the list. After this list was prepared it appears that respondent No.6 Sri Debasish Naha, on 04.6.2015, sent an application to the TPSC enclosing herewith his experience certificates. It appears that the name of Sri Debasish Naha was not found to be eligible because he had not enclosed any certificate to show what was his experience. The TPSC took note of the experience certificates and permitted Sri Debasish Naha and one other gentleman Sri Biswanath Majumder to file their experience certificates and they were then called for interview. Interviews were conducted on 13.6.2015 and thereafter on 06.7.2015 a notification was issued wherein the names of respondent Nos.6 and 7 were shown as the selected candidates.

4. Thereafter Anirban Dasgupta filed WP(C) No.269 of 2015 and the main ground of challenge was that the applications filed by the private respondents were not complete and that the TPSC had illegally permitted the private respondents to appear in the interview. It was alleged that since they were ineligible to appear in the interview they could not have been selected. In the writ petition there was no specific allegation against respondent No.7 Sri Shibabrata Bardhan but the allegation qua Sri Debasish Naha was that he had not submitted a complete application initially and that he had wrongly been permitted by the TPSC to submit the experience certificates more than one year after the last date for filing of application. The writ petition was contested. The stand of the TPSC was that since the respondent No.6 was an in-service candidate he had in terms of the guidelines submitted an advance copy to the TPSC and that the department had later sent the second copy. An impression was given as if the second copy also contained the experience certificate. As far as respondent No.7 is concerned, there was no specific allegation against him other than a general allegation that he was unfit to hold the post of Financial Controller. The learned Single Judge after hearing the parties by the impugned judgment has set aside the appointment of both respondents 6 and 7 and has further directed that fresh selection be done to select the candidate for the post