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Nutan Kumari vs. B.R.A. Bihar University and Others

Not available · 2023 INSC 966Decided 12 Oct 2023
Not available

Background

Bihar's B.R.A. University advertised posts of Physical Training Instructor in four colleges. The appellant, Nutan Kumari, and four other candidates (respondents no. 5 to 8) applied and were interviewed by the same five-member Selection Committee, on the same day, once for each of the four colleges. Bizarrely, the same candidates received wildly different interview marks each time they were interviewed for a different college (for example, the appellant scored between 12 and 24 out of 30 across her four interviews for the identical set of qualifications). The four respondents were selected and appointed, but a Chancellor-ordered inquiry later found the selection process deeply flawed and recommended cancelling the appointments; a single judge of the Patna High Court agreed and quashed them, but a Division Bench reversed that, restoring the appointments and dismissing the appellant's challenge.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court restored the single judge's findings, agreeing that the wildly inconsistent interview marks given to identical candidates by the identical committee on the same day showed the selection process was arbitrary and untrustworthy, especially since the marking criteria for academic qualifications were never disclosed in the advertisement and were instead invented by the Selection Committee only on the day of interviews. The Court also separately found that one of the selected candidates, respondent no. 6, was over-age under the government's own stated cut-off rule and should never have been allowed to apply. All the impugned appointments were quashed, and the University was directed to hold a fresh, single (not four-times-repeated), transparent interview for the remaining open posts among the appellant and the still-eligible respondents, under a Selection Committee to be freshly constituted, ideally by the Chancellor given past allegations against the Vice-Chancellor and Registrar.

Lesson Learnt

A selection process that changes evaluation criteria only on the day of interview, is not disclosed in the advertisement, and produces wildly inconsistent scores for the same candidates is legally arbitrary and can be struck down even years later: public recruitment must be transparent and consistent from the advertisement stage onward.

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

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