Judiciary can't assume the role of a selection panel, says SC

The Supreme Court has ruled that the judiciary cannot arrogate itself to the role of a fact-finding committee or substitute a selection committee for appointment of candidates to a government post. Further unsuccessful candidate cannot and assail the selection process after having participated in it, a bench of Justices S B Sinha and V S Sirpurkar said in a judgment. The apex court passed the judgement while reversing a High Court order and upholding the selection process conducted by the Assam government for recruiting over 5,000 constables. A single judge of the High Court had quashed the selection process in the three districts of Dhubri, Barpeta and Sonitpur holding that the interviews were held improperly. The single judge arrived at the finding after appointing a three-member committee which said that hundreds of candidates were interviewed on a single day as against the maximum bench mark of 250 candidates fixed by the court. The High Court's order was challenged in the apex court which held that it erred by concluding that the selection process was invalid merely because the number of interviews in a day breached the 250 benchmark fixed by the single judge. "Unfortunately, the high court took it upon itself the task of substituting itself for the selection committee and also in the process assumed the role of an appellate tribunal which was in our opinion not proper," the apex court said. "It was not for the high court to place itself into a position of a fact finding commission, that too more particularly at the instance of those petitioners who were unsuccessful candidates,” the Supreme Court said in a 51-page judgement. "This apart from the fact that the courts below did not have any tangible evidence regarding the interviews being farcical except the self-serving statement made by the unsuccessful candidates in the writ petition," the apex court observed. The order of the single judge which was on the basis of a bunch of writ petitions filed by unsuccessful candidates was affirmed by a division bench, upon which many of the successful candidates appealed in the apex court. The high court failed to cite any reasons as to why the unsuccessful candidates were rejected, the bench said. According to the apex court the high court should have restricted itself to the pleadings made in the writ petitions but had instead embarked upon the task of acting as a selection committee. The apex court said that a selection process can be quashed on a challenged only if it can be established that the authorities had erred during the exercise of power. "Both the courts below have not recorded any finding that they found malafides on the part of any state official who headed the interviews. On the other hand, the tenor of the judgements show the whole process did not suffer from the malafides, lack of bonafides, bias or political interference," the bench observed while upholding the selection process.

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