Karnataka Cooperative Milk Producers’ Federation Ltd. (KMF) turning away a deserving job aspirant merely because a document uploaded on the online recruitment portal was not legible is not a happy thing to happen in a welfare state, the High Court of Karnataka has said.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Prasanna B. Varale and Justice Krishna S. Dixit made the observations while allowing an appeal filed by a 32-year-old job aspirant, Devaraj P.R., of Bengaluru. He had questioned a single judge’s order of upholding the KMF’s action of considering him under the general merit category for the post of Accounts Assistant Grade-I instead of under the reserved category on the ground that his caste certificate uploaded on the KMF’s recruitment portal was illegible.
‘Absolutely unfair’
“The action of the KMF in shunting the appellant to the general merit category merely because the caste certificate, which he had uploaded was not clearly visible or that it was illegible, is absolutely unfair, to say the least,” the Bench observed while pointing out that a simple intimation to the candidate about the so-called defect would have been sufficient to be compliant with the principles of natural justice. However the KMF had not undertaken the exercise of intimating the appellant about the illegibility of the uploaded certificate, the Bench noted.
Declining to accept the KMF’s contention that the recruitment notification had stated that online applications with incomplete information and unclear documents would be rejected, the Bench said that it was not a case of a false or inadmissible caste certificate but the uploaded certificate was merely not legible.
What could have been done
The KMF could have asked the appellant to again upload or to produce the original certificate for verification as the recruitment notification had a provision for calling for the documents for verification or scrutiny, the Bench pointed out.
Also, the Bench directed the KMF to consider the original caste certificate of the appellant and consider him for the appointment to the post under the reserved category by creating a supernumerary post as the KMF had said that recruitment was completed to the post to which the appellant had applied for.
