The Madras High Court has criticised the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC) for having adopted a “pedantic” approach in rejecting the candidature of a Scheduled Caste aspirant to the post of Civil Judge because of a delay in producing a valid community certificate from the Tahsildar of his village.
A Division Bench of Justices V. Bharathidasan and V. Parthiban said: “From the manner in which the Commission rejected the candidature of the petitioner in haste, does not show the Commission in good light as it is expected to adopt the principle of fairness in all its actions. The Commission’s decision appears to be too rash and apathetic.”
The judges also concurred with senior counsel P. Wilson, representing the candidate, that, “The Commission which is a premier recruiting agency in the State of Tamil Nadu, clothed with constitutional status, cannot abdicate its constitutional responsibility and deal with the claims of reserved candidates in such a cavalier fashion.”
Authoring the verdict, Justice Parthiban went on to state: “This is a fit case where the action of the Commission in rejecting the candidature of the petitioner should be discountenanced outright. The decision of the Commission, in the opinion of this court, is borne out of bureaucratic callousness and insensitivity.”
Pointing out that the Commission ought to have permitted the petitioner to continue to participate in the selection process after giving him sufficient time to produce the community certificate in a proper format, the judges set aside its order rejecting petitioner’s candidature and permitted him to participate.
The writ petition had been filed advocate A.K. Anand who had cleared both his preliminary and main examinations conducted in 2018.
Subsequently, he was provisionally selected for the viva-voce, when his certificates were also verified.
On verification, the officials found that the petitioner had submitted a community certificate issued by an authority in his temporary residence at Puducherry and not from his permanent residence in Villupuram. He obtained two weeks’ time to submit the certificate. However, it took a little longer to submit the certificate by when the Commission rejected his candidature.
