Srinagar: The High Court of J&K and Ladakh Monday held that an employer cannot abandon a selection process at any time arbitrarily without any reasonable and just cause. “There can be no dispute on the proposition of law that mere selection does not confer any right of appointment and that an employer has a right to abandon the selection process at any time, but the question would be: ‘Can it be done arbitrarily without any reasonable and just cause on the sweet will of the employer,’” a bench of Justice Javed Iqbal Wani said.
Allowing an aggrieved candidate’s plea who was denied selection as driver in J&K Sports Council in 2014 despite being meritorious, the court asked if an employer be permitted to resort to pick and choose method while making appointment from a selection list by appointing a less meritorious candidate and leave more meritorious candidate.
“The answer has to be emphatic no, not at all because ours is a country governed by rule of law and arbitrariness is an anathema to the rule of law,” the court said.
The court said that the fundamental questions that arise for consideration in the instant petition was as to what were the rights of a candidate, who competes in a selection process and could an employer, who, admittedly, was a State within the meaning of Article 12 of the constitution selectively make appointments regardless of the merit determined in a selection process.
The court said that when an employer invites applications for filling up a large number of posts, a large number of unemployed youth apply for it.
“They spend time in filling the form and pay the application fee and thereafter, spend time to prepare for the examination, as well as money to travel to the place, where tests in furtherance of the selection process is held,” it said.
“If they qualify the written test, they may have again to appear for interview and medical examination and travel again and those, who are successful and are declared to have qualified, have a reasonable expectation that they will be appointed and no doubt this is not a vested right, yet the employer or the State has to give justifiable non-arbitrary reasons for not offering such successful qualified candidates’ appointment, particularly, when the employer is State, as it is bound to act and follow the mandate of Article 14 of the constitution,” the court said.
It held that the state cannot without any reason decline to fill up a post without any lawful justification and the same should not be arbitrary, capricious, and whimsical.
The court directed the J&K Sports Council to offer appointment to the candidate who had petitioned against the post of driver and grant him all consequential benefits.