Laying down the guidelines to the Centre and the states to follow the rules about recruitment of their employees strictly as per the laid down policy, the Supreme Court has held that any employment given beyond the number of vacancies advertised would be unconstitutional and liable to be struck down as null and void.
“If requisition and advertisement are for a certain number of posts only, the government cannot make more appointments than the number of posts. The government cannot deviate from the advertisement and make appointments in posts falling vacant, thereafter, in exceptional cases or in an emergent situation (on the basis of the same advertised list), and, that too, by taking a policy decision in that behalf,” the court said.
A bench of Justices Altamas Kabir and S.S. Nijar said that the principle of equality as laid down in Article 14 of the Constitution “does not envisage negative equality and if the government had committed a mistake, it cannot be forced to perpetuate the same”.
The court said that the persons recruited beyond the sanctioned advertisement could not make the plea of equality under Article 14 for sustaining their illegal employment merely on the basis of the “mistake” committed by government regarding their illegal appointment.
“Inclusion of candidates in the select list does not confer any right to be selected, even if some of the vacancies remained unfilled… even if in some cases the appointments had been made by mistake or wrongly, that does not confer any right of appointment to another person,” the Supreme Court said while citing the law laid down by it in earlier several judgments on the issue.
The verdict came on an appeal by Arup Das and some other persons from Assam, who had challenged the Guahati high court order striking down his appointment made by the land record survey department beyond the 160 advertised posts.
Rejecting their joint appeal, the top court said recommending Arup and some other candidates’ names for the training after 160 candidates had already been selected, was in violation of the recruitment norms as the government had only advertised 160 posts, which it had already filled up. Any subsequent recommendation for the training beyond the number of advertised posts was illegal and thus liable to be struck.