Sanjay K. Dixit and Others v. The State of Uttar Pradesh and Others
Background
The U.P. Power Corporation advertised 2,974 posts of Technician Grade-2 (Apprenticeship Electrical), requiring candidates to produce a DOEACC computer-course certificate at the time of interview. Many candidates who cleared the written test and interview could not produce this certificate on time, so the Corporation's Chairman relaxed the deadline twice (first to 28 March 2012, then further to 31 July 2012) without this relaxation power being mentioned in the original advertisement. Unsuccessful candidates challenged the selection list in the High Court; the Division Bench held the relaxation was impermissible for want of advertisement notice, but as a matter of fairness upheld appointments only for those who submitted certificates by the first deadline (28 March 2012) and cancelled appointments of those who used the second, later relaxation, prompting appeals to the Supreme Court from both sides.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court agreed that relaxing eligibility conditions without disclosing the existence of that power in the advertisement itself is impermissible, citing its earlier ruling in Bedanga Talukdar v. Saifudullah Khan that such undisclosed relaxation violates Articles 14 and 16 by denying other candidates an equal opportunity. However, relying on the principle that a court's final relief need not mechanically follow its reasoning (ratio decidendi) where complete justice requires otherwise, the Court upheld the High Court's calibrated remedy: protecting those who had submitted certificates by the first extended deadline (28 March 2012) because the delay was due to DOEACC's own slowness in issuing certificates, while denying the same protection to those who used the second, later relaxation, since ongoing recruitment cycles since 2013 left no vacant 2012 posts to reinstate them into and they had shown less diligence. The Court held no candidate has an indefeasible right to appointment merely from being on a select list, and dismissed/disposed of all the tagged appeals accordingly.
Lesson Learnt
An employer's power to relax recruitment eligibility conditions must be disclosed in the advertisement itself to be valid, undisclosed relaxation is unfair to other applicants, but courts can still mould final relief to protect candidates who were victims of circumstances beyond their control (like a certifying agency's delay), even while denying that same relief to less diligent or later claimants.