High court raps HPSC for rejecting SC candidate’s application, imposes Rs 1.5 lakh fine

In a scathing rebuke to the Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC), the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashed the rejection of a Scheduled Caste (SC) candidate’s application for the Haryana Civil Services (Judicial Branch) Examination 2023-2024.

The bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Sumeet Goel also imposed costs of Rs 1.50 lakh on HPSC “for having wasted precious time of this court which could have been utilised for hearing and deciding more pressing matters”. Out of the total, Rs 50,000 is to be paid to the petitioner, while the remainder is to be deposited in Poor Patient’s Welfare Fund at PGIMER, Chandigarh.

“The present case is an un-soothing illustration of how litigations are pursued on behalf of the state, HPSC to be more precise in the case in hand, in a totally mechanical and indifferent fashion. The proceedings reveal a lack of due diligence, reflective of an apathetic approach that undermines the principles of responsible governance and judicial propriety,” the bench asserted.

The ruling came in a case where the petitioner, represented by senior advocate Anand Chhibbar along with advocates Shreya B Sarin and Himanshu Malik, challenged the rejection of her candidature for the post of Civil Judge (Junior Division) over “trivial” and “technical” irregularities in her SC certificate.

The bench noted that the petitioner had submitted SC certificate dated July 11, 2016, issued by the Gurugram tehsildar. But HPSC rejected her application, citing the absence of a registration number and date on the certificate’s top left side, as well as the non-submission of a domicile certificate.

The bench admonished HPSC for its rigid and hyper-technical approach, observing that information was provided on the bottom-left side and the rejection was “sans logic”. “Such conduct reflects an absence of serious application of mind, resulting in an unwarranted litigation that burdens the judicial system. This tendency can be curbed only if the courts across the system adopt an institutional approach which penalises such comportment. The imposition of costs is a necessary instrument, which has to be deployed to weed out such an unscrupulous conduct,” the bench asserted.

Referring to the importance of equity and substantial justice over procedural technicalities, the bench asserted added reservation certificates were more often than not issued at the end of the authorities concerned. A candidate did not have any say, “nay authoritative say”, in its issuance.

“In actual life, it is often exasperatingly cumbersome for a candidate to obtain requisite certificate nay one issued in the exact prescribed form from the concerned authority. A technical irregularity/defect in such certificate(s) issued by the concerned competent authority is, thus, beyond the control of an aspirant,” the court added. The case has been listed for further consideration on May 5 to ensure compliance with the court’s directions.