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Gohil Vishvaraj Hanubhai & Others v. State of Gujarat & Others

Civil Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Civil Appeal Nos. 5680-83 of 2017)Decided 28 Apr 2017
Civil Appeal Nos. 5680-83 of 2017
Justice J. Chelameswar · Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre

Background

Gujarat created 1800 new "Revenue Talati" posts and, due to time constraints, let its own Revenue Board (rather than the usual Selection Board) conduct the recruitment exam. After the exam, a forensic lab found 284 OMR answer sheets carrying a suspicious pre-arranged mark, and the recruitment committee disqualified those candidates and issued a provisional merit list. Soon after, the State received a wave of complaints of large-scale cheating, bribery rings, family members and people sharing addresses appearing suspiciously together in the merit list, prompting the government to scrap the entire recruitment process and announce a fresh one through the proper Selection Board. Several candidates who had passed and were not themselves accused of malpractice challenged this wholesale cancellation as unfair to innocent candidates like them, and after losing in the Gujarat High Court, appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the evidence of large-scale malpractice, including bribery and manipulation of the exam process, genuinely justified remedial action by the State, and that it was not practically feasible to painstakingly identify and remove only the guilty candidates through prolonged inquiries or prosecutions before restarting. Applying the Wednesbury standard (a narrower "second-guessing" review reserved for claims of pure arbitrariness, as opposed to the stricter proportionality test used for claims of discrimination) under Article 14 of the Constitution, the Court found that treating all candidates alike, scrapping the whole process rather than selectively weeding out proven wrongdoers, was a reasonable and rational response, especially since every candidate (innocent or not) was still allowed to compete again in the fresh exam, with the State addressing concerns about candidates having crossed the age limit in the meantime. Finding no legal infirmity in the State's approach, the Court dismissed the appeals with no order as to costs.

Lesson Learnt

When a government finds serious, widespread fraud in a public recruitment exam, it can lawfully cancel the entire process and start over, even at some cost to innocent candidates, rather than being forced into a slow, case-by-case identification of wrongdoers, as long as everyone gets a fair chance to compete again in the fresh process.

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

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