IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Civil Writ Petition No.5286 of 2011 (O&M) Date of decision:14.12.2011 Suman wife of Shri Sanjay Sharma, R/o Village Rajpura Kharkhari, Tehsil and District Bhiwani. ...Petitioner versus Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, B-1/33, Sushant Lok-III, Sector 27, Gurgaon, through its Chief Regional Manager, and another. ....Respondents CORAM: HON’BLE MR. JUSTICE K. KANNAN ---- Present: Mr.Sunil Kumar Bhardwaj, Advocate, for the petitioner. Mr. Anil Malhotra, Advocate, for the respondents. ---- 1. Whether reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment ? No. 2. To be referred to the reporters or not ? No. 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the digest ? No. ---- K.Kannan, J. (Oral) 1. The petitioner challenges the order accepting a complaint made by the next candidate in the order of merit against the award of a contract of dealership of a retail petrol outlet. The petitioner had been originally declared as selected but the impugned order has come to be passed at the instance of a complaint made by the candidate, who was ranked No.2 that the property consideration which was accepted by the authorities was not appropriate, among Civil Writ Petition No.5286 of 2011 (O&M) - 2- other reasons. In the impugned order, it is stated that the petitioner had a maximum perpendicular depth of 24.52 meter within the offered plot area as against the requirement of 36 meters and hence the site offered for location of the outlet be liable to be rejected. While examining the document filed by the petitioner on the availability of some other property held on lease, the Regional Manager, who was passing the impugned order, had noticed that the document of lease contained a clause that barred subletting of the premises which meant that the Corporation which was required to use the premise for storing their petrol products could not have done without violating the term of the lease itself. 2. The learned counsel for the petitioner states that as a selected candidate, he was entitled to be joined in any form of investigation and a decision taken by the authority without affording to him such an opportunity was vitiated. Since through the impugned order the private respondent/complainant was not taken as selected, but it was only setting the selection process was to be started afresh. I had requested the counsel to point out to me what difference it could have made if a notice had been given and how he could fault the two reasons which had been assigned for cancellation. The counsel for the petitioner states that he will not be able to join issues on the grounds of rejection but he is only aggrieved that an opportunity had not been given to him before a decision was taken. Rules of natural justice cannot be visualized in Civil Writ Petition No.5286 of 2011 (O&M) - 3 - the air or in the vacuum. A person that complains of a decision to be vitiated as in breach of a natural justice must also show that a notice would have made a difference and that it should be possible for him to show as to how the order was wrong. If the petitioner cannot point out to the defects in the order, I would not want the matter to be remitted to the authority only for going through a formality of issuing a notice to the petitioner. I cannot see that the petitioner had a vested right by the only fact that he had been shortlisted. The property verification was part of the selection process and the announcement of the result was only provisional in the sense that only after confirming that the details submitted at the time of interview were appropriate. The respondents could have been finalized the selection and issued the letter of intent. I do not find that the case affords a scope for a reappraisal for the reasons enumerated above. The writ petition is dismissed. (K. KANNAN) JUDGE 14.12.2011 sanjeev