The Madras high court has held that if reserved candidates aspiring for recruitment through Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC) send their applications without enclosing the community certificates, their applications should be summarily rejected.
A division bench comprising Justices Elipe Dharma Rao and M. Venugopal dismissed the appeal filed by E. Bamila, who sought treat her candidature in reserved category.
According to Bamila, she belonged to the backward Kerala Mudali community. When she submitted her application to write the TNPSC examination in September 2010, she failed to enclose her community certificate along with the application.
However, she was allowed to write the examination in October 2010 and called for an oral test in August 2011.
During the verification of documents, since it became clear that the community certificate was not enclosed, she was treated as an open category candidate. She failed to clear the test.
Hence, she filed a petition to treat her as an reserved category candidate. But a single judge dismissed it. Against this, she filed the present appeal.
The TNPSC submitted that as per paragraph 11 of the job notification, applications of reserved candidates would be summarily rejected if they were not accompanied by the community certificate.
However, as per Clause 59 of the office order of the TNPSC, if the candidate concerned was otherwise eligible, he/she will be allowed to write the examination as an open category candidate and not under reserved category.
As per Clause 60 of the office order, in case the candidates had enclosed the certificate but it had not reached the office for some reason, he/she would be given 15 days to furnish fresh certificate.
Rejecting the submission of TNPSC, the bench said the rejection clause in the job notification and the two clauses of the office order were contradicting each other.
With a view to erase the confusion and keeping in mind the better interest of thousands of candidates taking on TNPSC examination, and further in view of the settled legal position that the terms and conditions in the notification will bind not only the candidates but also the TNPSC, the conditions in office order No.59 and 60 dated November 7, 2006, were set aside as they were against the public policy and welfare, the bench added.
Pulling up the TNPSC for having failed to reject Bamila’s incomplete application, the bench said the two clauses were nothing but wasteful ones, since they permit an unqualified candidate to take down the examination.