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Veerendra Kr. Gautam & Ors. v. Karuna Nidhan Upadhyay & Ors.

Civil Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Civil Appeal No. 3361 of 2015)Decided 15 Jul 2016
Civil Appeal No. 3361 of 2015
Justice F.M. Ibrahim Kalifulla · Justice S.A. Bobde

Background

A batch of appeals arose from a common Allahabad High Court judgment that had set aside the selection lists for Principals of various Post Graduate and Degree Colleges in Uttar Pradesh (selections made in 2007 and 2008), after finding the selection process seriously flawed and infected by large-scale irregularities. The selected candidates, who had been allowed to continue in their posts under earlier interim orders (subject to an undertaking to revert if they ultimately lost), appealed to the Supreme Court against the cancellation of the selection.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that where an entire selection process is shown to be pervasively corrupted by illegality, it is not possible or appropriate to separate "innocent" selected candidates from the tainted process, citing its own precedent that when a selection is "conceived in fraud," individual innocence has no place because the whole exercise, not just individual candidates, is what is faulted. The Court rejected arguments based on reservation-related selections and on precedent allowing appointees to continue in supernumerary posts, finding those cases factually different. It fully affirmed the High Court's directions, including setting aside the tainted select lists, directing selected candidates to honour their earlier undertakings (reverting to their prior posts and repaying salary differences), and asking the Higher Education Service Commission to frame proper interview guidelines going forward, and dismissed the appeals.

Lesson Learnt

When a public recruitment or selection process is found to be fundamentally and pervasively corrupted, courts will cancel the entire selection rather than try to save individual candidates, even those who may not have personally done anything wrong: the integrity of the process as a whole outweighs individual hardship.

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

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