Supreme Court sets aside orders of single judge bench and division bench of Patna High Court, which ignored previous decisions of the Court

Supreme Court's bench of Justices J.K. Maheshwari and K.V. Viswanathan set aside the judgment of the Division Bench of the Patna High Court in Vashist Narayan Kumar vs. The State of Bihar dated August 22, 2022 and directed the State to treat the appellant as a candidate who has “passed”, in the selection process held by the Central Selection Board (Constable Recruitment), Patna with the date of birth as December 18, 1997. The case was filed in the Supreme Court on May 1, 2023. It was registered on June 13, 2023 and verified on May 29, 2023. 

The appellant had applied for Police Constable Post and cleared the written examination and the Physical Eligibility Test but he was declared failed for the reason that in the application form uploaded online, his date of birth was shown as December 8, 1997, in the school mark sheet, his date of birth was reflected as December 18, 1997. The High Court's order of Justices P. B. Bajanthri and Rajiv Roy bench had dismissed his petition challenging the result. Justice Bajanthri's order dismissing the petition had concluded: "For seeking mandamus one must establish his statutory right that his name is reflected in the final select list. In the absence of these ingredients, the appellant has not made out a case so as to interfere with the impugned order dated 30.07.2019 passed in C.W.J.C. No. 12527 of 2018."

The High Court's order of July 30, 2019 authored by Justice Shivaji Pandey reads: "In the application form, it has clearly been mentioned that if any information supplied by the applicant is found to be incorrect, then his/her candidature will be liable to be rejected. Furthermore, the advertisement is of the yer 2017 and all the persons have already been appointed. In such view of the matter, this Court does not find any merit in this writ petition, accordingly, the same is dismissed." 

Supreme Court's decision shows that the orders of Justice Bajanthri and Justice Pandey was ridden with error because both the orders ignored the previous decisions of the apex Court.   

Supreme Court relied on the decision in Divya vs. Union of India & Ors., 2023:INSC:900 = 2023 (13) Scale 730, wherein the Court declined relief to candidates who acquired eligibility after the date mentioned in the notification carved out a narrow exception. The judgment had taken note of decision in Ajay Kumar Mishra vs. Union of India & Ors., [2016] SCC OnLine Del 6563. 

In Ajai Kumar Mishra case, Justice Indira Banerjee speaking for the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court stated:"It is true that whenever any material discrepancy is noticed in the application form and/or when any suppression and/ or misrepresentation is detected, the candidature might be cancelled even after the application has been processed and the candidate has been allowed to participate in the selection process. However, after a candidate has participated in the selection process and cleared all the stages successfully, his candidature can only be cancelled, after careful scrutiny of the gravity of the lapse, and not for trivial omissions or errors.” The exception for trivial errors or omissions is for the reason that law does not concern itself with trifles. This principle is recognized in the legal maxim - De minimis non curat lex which means "Law does not concern itself with trifles."

The counsel for the appellant had cited the following judgments in support of her proposition that inadvertent error in filling up the date of birth when no advantage is derived will not constitute a wilful misrepresentation and contended that in all those cases reliefs were given to the candidates:
i) Arkshit Kapoor vs. Union of India, 2017 SCC OnLine Del 10154 [para 20]10
ii) K. Sangeetha vs. Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (2018) SCC OnLine Mad 5075 [Para 9 &11]
iii)Anuj Pratap Singh vs. Union Public Service Commission,2018 SCC OnLine Del10982[Para15,16&21]
iv) Shubham Tushir vs. Union of India, 2019 SCC OnLine Del 9831 [Para 4 & 10]
v) Staff Selection Commission & Anr. Vs. Shubham Tushir LPA No. 237 of 2020 Delhi High Court
vi) Poonam Pal vs. M.P. Gramin Bank, (2022) SCC OnLine MP 2921 [Para 9-12]

The Court recorded her submission wherein she referred to the decision in Anuj Pratap Singh case which made it clear in para 14 of its judgment that "the candidate unable to correct the error at the first point was forced to repeat it while submitting the application for sitting in the main exam since he had no other option.The Court accepted the explanation and condoned the error in the filling up of the column pertaining to the date of birth." 

For some reason the name of the lady counsel of the appellant referred in the judgement with approval does not appear either in the cause list or in the judgement. It is apparent that she must have been one of the counsels who assisted Advocate Gopal Singh but her name has not been acknowledged. It is noteworthy that it was her written and oral submission which led to reversal of the orders of the single judge bench and division bench of Patna High Court which had ignored previous decisions of the Supreme Court with regard to settled law based on legal maxim – De minimis non curat lex.  

Supreme Court's judgement reads: "We further direct that if the appellant is otherwise not disqualified, the case of the appellant be considered and necessary appointment letter issued. We further direct that, in the event of there being no vacancy, appointment letter will still have to be issued on the special facts of this case. We make the said direction, in exercise of powers under Article 142 of the Constitution of India. We further direct that the State will be at liberty in that event to adjust the vacancy in the next recruitment that they may resort to in the coming years. We notice from the written submissions of the State that 21, 391 vacancies have been notified in Advertisement No.1 of 2023 and it is stated that the procedure for selection is ongoing. We place the said statement on record." It had directed compliance to be made of its direction within a period of four weeks from January 2, 2024. 

It  concluded that the appellant had participated in the selection process and cleared all the stages successfully. The error in the application is trivial which did not play any part in the selection process. The State was not justified in making a mountain out of this molehill. It observed: "We do not think that the appellant could be penalised for this insignificant error which made no difference to the ultimate result. Errors of this kind, as noticed in the present case, which are inadvertent do not constitute misrepresentation or wilful suppression."

Notably, the Court's order sheet in Upendra Manjhi vs. The State of Bihar (2024) recorded the names of lawyers as the 'arguing counsel', in a first instance. The Court has ruled that advocates-on-record (AoR) in a given case must mark the appearance of only those lawyers who are authorized to appear and argue that case on the particular day. In Baidya Nath Choudhary v Dr Sree Surendra Kumar Singh, it had directed that only lawyers who are present in court physically or online during hearings are permitted to mark their appearance for cases. It observed that it is totally unfair if lawyers who are not present during the hearing mark their appearance.