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Rakesh Bakshi v. The State of Jammu and Kashmir

Civil Appeal · 2019 INSC 74Decided 22 Jan 2019
Civil Appeal Nos. 235-236 of 2019
Justice Ashok Bhushan · Justice K.M. Joseph

Background

The appellants were selected as Junior Engineers in 1997 pursuant to an advertisement, but their qualifying examination results were declared only after the cut-off date for applications. A rival candidate (the writ petitioner) challenged their selection; the High Court's Division Bench set aside their appointments on the ground that they did not hold the requisite qualification by the cut-off date. The appellants challenged this before the Supreme Court, having by then worked in the post for nearly two decades.

Decision Breakdown

The Court agreed, as a matter of law, that eligibility must ordinarily be judged as of the cut-off date and that qualifications acquired later cannot retroactively make a candidate eligible. However, taking into account the appellants' nearly 18-20 years of continuous service, the fact that the original writ petitioner could not realistically secure selection himself given his low marks, and the equities built up over time, the Court held the interests of justice required setting aside the Division Bench's order. It allowed the appellants' appeal and dismissed the rival writ petition, also allowing the connected appeal filed by the State.

Lesson Learnt

Even where a selection technically violated eligibility rules, courts may decline to undo it after a very long passage of time if doing so would serve no real purpose for the challenger and would cause disproportionate hardship to those who have worked for decades: equity and delay can outweigh a strict legal violation on these facts.

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

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