Sadananda Halo & Others vs Momtaz Ali Sheikh & Others

2. The present Judgment shall dispose of all the above mentioned Special Leave Petitions.

4. As has been stated earlier, there were advertisements dated 21.8.2004 published in all the leading newspapers of the State which provided the District/Battalion-wise vacancies as also the vacancies meant for the reserved categories candidates. The notice also provided the further details regarding the dates and venue of the Recruitment Rally in each District. The minimum physical standards for male and female candidates were also indicated therein. The educational qualification was 8th Class passed while age limit was between 18 to 25 years as on 1.1.2004, relaxable by three years in the case of candidates belonging to SC/ST. 10% of the vacancies were to be filled up by women candidates while further 5% were reserved for compassionate appointments. Under the procedure of selection it was provided as under:

The guidelines were issued on 2.9.2004 for conducting recruitment tests. As per the said guidelines, the entry of the candidates into the Recruitment Rally was restricted to 5,000 on a single day. The candidates were to submit their filled in application forms to the Chairman of the Selection Board or his representatives before participating in the elimination race. For the male candidates, the distance of the race was 1.60 Kms. while for the female candidates it was 0.80 Kms. Only those candidates who could qualify in the physical standards were permitted to participate in the elimination race and only those who could qualify the elimination race were to be given identity numbers after recording their Bio-Data in the prescribed register. Those who could qualify in the elimination race were to face the physical test comprising of 100 meter race, high jump and long jump and only those candidates who could secure 25 marks out of the 50 allotted for physical efficiency test were to be called for personal interview, for which the allotted marks were 50. Those candidates who could qualify in the elimination race were to get 15 marks whereas the 35 marks were reserved for the physical efficiency test wherein 15 marks were to be for 100 meter race, 10 marks were for long jump and 10 marks for the high jump. The Recruitment Rallies were held between 3rd to 11th December, 2004 and after completion of the entire process of selection the select-lists for each District/Battalion were prepared. It was, at this stage that the Writ Petition came to be filed firstly challenging the very recruitment process and methodology adopted.

6. In the writ petitions various challenges were made before the learned Single Judge they were, inter alia, (i) not following the procedure in the employment notice; (ii) non maintenance of necessary Registers; (iii) selection of the candidates without their taking part in the selection process or the selection of under-qualified and over-aged candidates; (iv) selection of those candidates who could not qualify the physical tests; (v) interpolations/tampering in the allotted marks to the candidates; (vi) political interference in support of some of the selected candidates; (vii) allotment of 50 marks for the personal interview segment as also (ix) consideration of huge number of candidates within a span of only 9 days. In short the whole selection was dubbed as farcical. Learned Single Judge cancelled the entire selection in respect of 15 Districts out of 26 Districts and that is how the appeals were filed by the selected candidates as has already been clarified by us. Now we are concerned only with the selections of three Districts named above.

(ii) Shri N. Borah, Asstt. Commandant, 20th IR Battalion, Panari, Member;

BARPETA DISTRICT

SONITPUR DISTRICT

50. For all the above reasons we hold in favour of the appellants and allow the appeals, setting aside the judgments of the learned Single Judge as well as the Division Bench in so far as they pertain to the three District of Dhubri, Barpeta and Sonitpur.