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Baidyanath Yadav v. Aditya Narayan Roy & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2019 INSC 1261Decided 19 Nov 2019
Civil Appeal No. 8847 of 2019
Justice Mohan M. Shantanagoudar · Justice Ajay Rastogi

Background

For Selection Year 2014, the Bihar Department of Agriculture had to recommend officers from its cadre for appointment to the IAS. Its Selection Committee recommended the appellant and another officer over Respondent No. 1, whose name had previously been returned by the General Administration Department (GAD) for not meeting the expected norms of recommendation. Respondent No. 1 challenged his non-recommendation before the Patna High Court, which found the process arbitrary and directed the State Screening Committee to recommend his name to the UPSC, thereby quashing the appellant's appointment to the IAS. The appellant and the state appealed this to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the High Court had erred in concluding the Department's non-recommendation of Respondent No. 1 in 2014 was suspect or arbitrary, since the record showed his earlier recommendation had genuinely been returned by the GAD for not meeting required norms: there was no evidence of mala fide or bias in recommending the appellant and another officer instead. Separately, and more fundamentally, the Court held that even if some arbitrariness had been found in the process, the High Court's specific direction ordering the Screening Committee to recommend Respondent No. 1's name was wholly without jurisdiction: a court can at most direct a fresh re-assessment of all candidates' names, not substitute its own choice of candidate for the Selection Committee's judgment. Finding no basis to disturb the appointments already made for 2014, the Court set aside the High Court's judgment and allowed the appeals.

Lesson Learnt

Even where a court finds fault with a selection process, it cannot direct the appointment of a specific candidate in place of the expert body's choice: its remedy is limited to ordering the selection process to be redone properly, not to picking the winner itself.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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