Sukhjit Kaur vs State of Punjab and others

Surya Kant, J.—This order shall dispose of Civil Writ Petitions No. 9859, of 2009, 5786, and 13132 of 2011, as common questions of law and facts are involved in these cases. For brevity the facts are being extracted from Civil Writ Petition No. 9859 of 2009.

The petitioner seeks a mandamus to direct the respondents to appoint her as J.B.T. Teacher against a post reserved for Backward Class category. The relief has been sought on the premise that the candidates lower in merit from the Backward class category have been given appointment to such posts.

Respondents have filed their reply/affidavit explaining that the Backward Class Certificate produced by the petitioner along with her application form was invalid, hence no benefit of reservation has been granted to her.

With a view to appreciate the plea taken by the respondents for not extending the benefit of reservation to the petitioner, it would be apposite to reproduce General Condition No. 6 of the advertisement dated 05.09.2007 (Annexure P-9) which reads as follow:

Candidate seeking reservation meant for the member of Scheduled Caste/Backward Classes of Punjab State only shall have to produce Scheduled Caste Certificate/Backward Class Certificate as applicable, as prescribed by the State Government, issued by the Competent Authority. The BC Certificate must not be older than one year on the last date of submitting the application in accordance with the institutions of Welfare Department issued vide dated 17.11.1994 and dated 18.8.2005, clearly indicating the caste.

(emphasis supplied).

The petitioner admittedly attached a Backward Class Certificate dated 10.08.2006 along with her application form which was more than one year old, though she also produced another Backward Class Certificate dated 24.03.2008 (Annexure P-13) but it was after the cut off date.

There is no denial to the fact that a similar issue where Backward Class candidates had appended the certificates which were more than one year old came up for consideration before this Court in Civil Writ Petition No. 11647 of 2008 decided on 18.5.2009 (Loveljeet Kaur and others v. The State of Punjab and others) and the claim of those petitioners was turned down by this Court after observing as follows:-

The requirement of the notification is that the certificate should not be older than one year preceding the last date for submission of the applications. All these Backward Class Certificates produced by the petitioners except petitioner No. 6, were issued much after the last date and, thus, cannot be considered for the purposes of selection against the Backward category. No material has been placed on record to show that the petitioners produced certificates in accordance with condition No. 6 of the advertisement issued by the competent authority within one year preceding the last date for submission of the applications.

It is well settled that the terms and conditions contained in a public notice/advertisement are sacrosanct similar and the same cannot be relaxed or deviated from pick and choose basis. If the petitioner''s claim for validation of more than one year old Backward Class Certificate is accepted it shall lead to discriminatory consequences as there might be several other candidates who may have relied upon such expired certificates and have been denied the benefit of reservation. Similarly, if the validity period of such like certificates is over looked, it can be self destructive to the object of the reservation policy which consciously excludes those who are in creamy-layers.

Following the view taken in Loveljeet Kaur''s case(supra) reproduced above, I do not find any merit in these petitions which are accordingly dismissed.

No costs.