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Legal Case Shots

Court judgements broken down into the case type, how the decision played out, and the lesson worth remembering, with the full judgement available as a PDF.

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Legal Case Shots is a searchable database of Supreme Court of India judgments, each broken down into the case type, the court's key holding, and a practical lesson learnt, with the full judgment available as a PDF for citation or deeper reading.

Service & Administrative LawSupreme Court of India

Sureshkumar Lalitkumar Patel & Ors. vs State of Gujarat & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2023 INSC 145Decided 20 Feb 2023
Civil Appeal Nos. 1355-1356 of 2023
Sanjiv Khanna · M.M. Sundresh

Background

In September 2015 Gujarat advertised posts of Supervisor Instructor (Class III) in its ITIs. Both the Departmental Selection Committee's resolution and the advertisement fixed clear cut-off marks out of 300-60% for General, 57% for SEBC and 55% for SC/ST, and stated that anyone scoring below the cut-off would not be eligible. The advertisement also provided horizontal reservation (33% for women, 10% for ex-servicemen, 3% for persons with disabilities) but expressly said that if suitable candidates from those groups were not available, the posts would go to other eligible candidates. After the exam results were published, not enough women, ex-servicemen and disabled candidates met the cut-off, so on the State Government's advice the Selection Committee in December 2016 slashed the qualifying marks to 40% (General) and 35% (reserved), treating the horizontal reservation as if it were a vertical quota. Candidates like Sureshkumar Patel, who would otherwise have been selected, went to the Gujarat High Court; a Single Judge ruled for them and the State implemented that order, but private candidates who had benefited from the reduced cut-off appealed and a Division Bench reversed it.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court allowed the appeals and set aside the Division Bench's decision. It held that an advertisement issued under a notification binds the recruiting body and has "all the trappings of a statutory prescription"; it can only be changed by a formal amendment, made before or during the process, and even then the change must survive Article 14 scrutiny. Once results are published, the process is effectively complete and preparing the select list is merely a ministerial act, so the general "cancel or amend" clauses in the advertisement gave no power to lower the cut-off at that stage. Although no candidate has a vested right to a post, every eligible candidate has a vested right to be considered according to the rules as they stood on the date of the advertisement (N.T. Devin Katti; Tamil Nadu Computer Science B.Ed. Graduate Teachers Welfare Society). The reduction here was not based on any assessment that lower marks were still adequate for the job; it was done purely to accommodate otherwise ineligible candidates, which is arbitrary. Balancing equities under Article 142, the Court nonetheless directed the State to consider accommodating the private respondents (women, ex-servicemen and disabled candidates who had already been serving for years) against still-vacant posts within their reserved percentage, without disturbing the appellants' appointments, and clarified that those respondents would rank as new entrants for seniority.

Lesson Learnt

A government recruiter cannot lower the pass mark after the results are out just to fit in more candidates from a favoured group: the rules published in the advertisement bind everyone, including the State. Candidates who meet the announced criteria have a legally enforceable right to be considered on those terms.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)
Sureshkumar Lalitkumar Patel & Ors. vs State of Gujarat & Ors. – Legal Case Shots | LegalAware