Mohan Kabira vs . Govt. Of NCT Of Delhi And Ors

Nita Chowdhury, Member (A)

By filing this OA, the applicant is seeking the following reliefs:-

"(i) direct the respondents to quash the Impugned Order dated 21.05.2018 issued by the office of Deputy Director of Education, District South East for arbitrarily and illegally rejecting the candidature of the applicant, Emp ID 2017036381, for engagement as Guest Teacher TGT Hindi;

(ii) direct the respondents to consider the candidature of the applicant as per the merit for the post applied;

(iii) issue any appropriate order or direction as this Hon'ble Tribunal may deem fit and proper in the interest of justice and in the favor of the applicant; and

(iv) allow the present application with cost in favor of the applicant."

This is the second round of litigation. In brief the fact,s as enumerated in the OA, are that the applicant is an aspirant for the posts of Guest Teacher TGT PET, which were advertised by Respondent no.1 vide advertisement dated 26. 5.2017. vide which applications were invited online.

2.1 The applicant successfully registered his application online for the said post in District South East. The respondents issued a circular dated 13.6.2017 for correction in the online application form, if any, in the application registered by the candidates.

2.2 The respondents shortlisted the applicant for verification of documents and for subsequent finalization of merit list on 20.9.2017. On 28.9.2017, the applicant has reported the office of Respondent No.2 for verification of his documents. However, the respondent no.2 rejected the candidature of the applicant without assigning any ground.

2.3 Aggrieved by the aforesaid action of the respondents, the applicant along with others had approached this Tribunal by filing OA 1174/2018 and this Tribunal vide Order dated 22.3.2018 disposed of the said OA with a direction to the respondents to decide the representations of the applicants therein within six weeks by reasoned order.

2.4 In compliance of the said Order of this Tribunal, respondents have considered the representation of the applicant and rejected the same vide impugned order dated 21.5.2018 on the ground that :

"....... the Applicant had intentionally mentioned wrong percentage of Marks attained at Secondary Level in his online application. It should have been 60.2% (301/500) for two languages and three compulsory subject, instead of 63.66 as mentioned by the applicant. Further, the applicant mentioned month and year of passing B.A. as September 2014 instead of April 2014 and also incorrectly mentioned month and year of passing B.Ed. as July 2016 instead of July 2015 in his online application. The applicant did not make necessary correction in the educational qualification in the online application for making online correction, as per the department circular dated 13.6.2017, which provided for such correction to be made, if so desired by the applicant up to 19.06.2017. Further, as per Note:- 3 in the online application of the candidate, no correction was to be allowed after submission of application. Thus, the applicant, therefore, had willfully submitted wrong information to the department, with a view to mislead the Govt. department, which tantamount to fraud.

2.5 Being aggrieved by the aforesaid actions of the respondents, the applicant has approached this Tribunal for redressal of his grievances.

We have perused the impugned order dated 21.5.2017. By the impugned order, the respondents rejected the candidature of the applicant by observing as quoted above. We have perused the grounds mentioned in the OA. We do not find any of the grounds convincing to interfere in the matter, as though the applicant admitted the grounds of rejection of his candidature but he stated that due to typographical error the month and year of passing has been entered wrongly which does not affect the merit of the applicant in any way and further the applicant has mentioned the percentage of Secondary School Exams with six subjects instead of five subjects. These grounds have no force in the eyes of law as the candidates were given a further opportunity to correct any error in the application form submitted by them online earlier. Despite that the applicant has chosen not to make the corrections in the same. If that be the case, the consequences of the same will be borne by the candidate(s).

The similar issue of non-uploadtion of certain information on website before the cut off date was raised before this Tribunal in OA No.2635/2018 (Smt. Anu Kumari vs. Union of India and another) in which this Tribunal, vide Order dated 31.7.2018, held that "....... It discloses that between 16.01.2018 and 29.01.2018, the applicant made attempts to access the website 8 times, and it was available on 5 occasions. However, she did not chose to communicate the same, which needed nothing more than pressing a button on the keyboard."

In view of the above discussions, for the foregoing reasons and having regard to the judgment of this Tribunal in the case of Smt. Anu Kumari (supra), we do not find any merit in the instant OA. All the candidates were given an equal opportunity to upload the correct details with regard to their online applications. The applicant cannot be given further opportunity to upload the application beyond the period of time fixed for the same as this will violate principle of equality before law given to all the candidates. It is pertinent to mention that now a day's aspirants of advertised posts are required to fill their applications online and it is incumbent upon all the aspirants to strictly follow the instructions with regard to their candidatures. Hence, the OA is accordingly dismissed at the admission stage itself. There shall be no order as to costs.