C O M M O N O R D E R

Heard Mrs. Nalini Chidambaram, Learned Senior Counsel for the Petitioner in W.P. No.7414 of 2023, Mr. T.Muthukrishnan, Learned Counsel for the Petitioner in W.P. No. 7934 of 2023 and Mr. J.Ravindran, Learned Additional Advocate General assisted by Mr. R.Bharanidharan, Learned Counsel appearing for the Respondents in all the Writ Petitions and perused the materials placed on record, apart from the pleadings of the parties.

2. The Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission, which is the Respondent in these Writ Petitions, had by Advertisement No. 613 issued Notification No. 10 of 2022 dated 04.04.2022 inviting applications from eligible candidates only through online mode upto 03.05.2022 for direct recruitment to the vacancies in the post of Combined Engineering Services.

3. The Petitioners in these Writ Petitions had applied online in furtherance to the said notification, but their register numbers had not been included in the list of provisionally admitted candidates to on-screen certificate verification published on 22.02.2023 in the official website of the Respondent based on the results of the written examination conducted on 02.07.2022. Complaining that no reasons had been assigned for not having included their names in the said list, the Petitioners have invoked the extraordinary jurisdiction of this Court under Article 226 of the Constitution for appropriate directions.

4. It has been demonstrated before this Court by the Respondent that as the Petitioners have not uploaded certain essential documents in support of the prescribed qualification for the posts in the notified vacancies, their applications have been rejected, and instead of submitting those required documents within the prescribed time, they have furnished some other documents. The specific details in that regard are shown in the self-explanatory tabular statement below:-

S. No.	Writ Petition No.	Name of the Petitioner	Date of filing of Writ Petition	Required document (which has not been uploaded)	Document wrongly uploaded (instead of required document)
	1. 7414 of 2023	R.Satish	07.03.2023	UG provisional certificate	Mark-Sheet for Class XII
	2. 7934 of 2023	A.Suganya	10.03.2023	UG certificate	PG certificate

The rejection of the applications of the said Petitioners is justified by the Respondent relying on the following clauses incorporated in the recruitment notification:-

"Clause 5 of the 'WARNING' mentioned in page 1 of the notification.

In respect of recruitment to this post, the applicants shall mandatorily upload the certificates/documents (in support of all the claims made/details furnished in the online application) at the time of submission of online application itself. It shall be ensured by the applicants that the online application shall not be submitted without uploading the required certificates.

(I) Evidence for all the claims made in the online application should be uploaded at the time of submission of online application. Any subsequent claim made after submission of online application will not be entertained. Failure to upload the documents at the time of submission of online application will entail rejection of application after due process.

(L) Incomplete applications and applications containing wrong claims or incorrect particulars relating to category of reservation / eligibility / age / gender / communal category / educational qualification / medium of instruction / physical qualification / other basic qualifications and other basic eligibility criteria will be summarily rejected after due process.

Clause 15 and 16 [internal page 25 and 26]

15. UPLOAD OF DOCUMENTS:

(a) In respect of recruitment to this post, the candidates shall mandatorily upload the certificates / documents (in support of all the claims made / details furnished in the online application) at the time of submission of online application itself. It shall be ensured that the online application shall not be submitted by the candidates without mand

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