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Sachin Kumar v. Delhi Subordinate Service Selection Board (DSSSB)

Civil Appeal · 2021 INSC 147Decided 3 Mar 2021
Civil Appeal Nos. 639-640 of 2021
Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud · Justice M.R. Shah

Background

DSSSB conducted a recruitment process for 231 posts of Head Clerk (Grade-II DASS) in the Delhi government, but complaints of serious irregularities emerged, including candidates with high Tier-I marks scoring near-zero in Tier-II, lack of randomisation letting relatives sit together, and an impersonation racket. Based on a committee's findings, the GNCTD cancelled the entire examination in 2016. Six candidates challenged the cancellation before the Central Administrative Tribunal, which set aside the cancellation for everyone in the zone of selection though only six had actually approached it; the Delhi High Court upheld this but limited the relief to only those six candidates, directing them to retake the Tier-II exam. Sachin Kumar and others, who had benefited from the Tribunal's wider order but had not themselves moved the Tribunal or successfully intervened before the High Court, appealed to the Supreme Court along with DSSSB and the Delhi government (who wanted the full cancellation upheld).

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that a second committee's finding that 281 shortlisted candidates were not involved in impersonation did not wipe out the first committee's separate findings of systemic irregularities, unequal access caused by e-admit-card-only issuance, lack of randomisation, and a malpractice racket, that tainted the Tier-I and Tier-II examinations as a whole. Since recruitment to public posts must command public confidence and the flaws here were systemic rather than confined to a few individuals, the decision to cancel the entire process could not be called arbitrary or disproportionate even though it caused hardship to innocent candidates. The Court therefore upheld the GNCTD's cancellation notification, allowed the appeals of DSSSB and GNCTD, set aside the High Court's and Tribunal's judgments, and dismissed the companion appeals filed by candidates (including Sachin Kumar), while directing DSSSB and GNCTD to overhaul their recruitment safeguards within two months.

Lesson Learnt

When a public recruitment process is shown to be tainted by systemic, large-scale irregularities rather than isolated individual wrongdoing, courts will generally uphold a decision to cancel the entire process, even though this means some blameless candidates lose an opportunity they were not personally at fault for losing.

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

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