MANOJ PANWAR Vs. GOVT OF NCT OF DELHI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE issue involved in all these writ petitions, being identical, including the facts, the same were heard together and are being decided vide this common judgment. For the sake of brevity, facts of WP (C) Nos. 16582-84/2004 are taken.

(2.) VIDE advertisement No. F-3 (20)/97/s-II dated 9-16. 8. 1997, the Government of nct of Delhi advertised various posts of DASS Grade-II and Grade-IV posts for appointment of the Govt. of NCT of Delhi. All these posts were reserved for sports persons and were to be filled from amongst meritorious sportsmen and women. For Grade-II, there were 10 posts and for Grade-IV the advertisement was for 27 posts. Number of persons claiming to be covered in the said sports category submitted their applications. While this process was on, the Delhi subordinate Service Selection Board (hereinafter referred to as the 'board') was constituted in the Month of September 1999, which is given the task of making recruitments to the various appointments in the Govt. of NCT of Delhi. Thus, after the constitution of this Board, the entire record pertaining to the selection was sent to the Board for making selections. The Board constituted an expert Committee comprising of Dr. S. N. Gupta, Deputy Director (Sports), Delhi university; Dr. R. S. Maan, Reader in Physical Education, Shaheed Bhagat Singh college, Delhi University; the Chairman, Secretary and Deputy Secretary of the board. This Committee formulated the criteria which was to be adopted for carrying out the selections. As per this criteria the candidates were required to be assessed in the following three stages :-

(3.) AFTER conducting the trials, a comparative merit list was drawn adding the marks obtained by the candidates in the first two stages, i. e. past achievement and trials. The candidates in the said comparative merit list were called for interview. One Mr. Shailesh Mudgal did not receive the interview call. He approached the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), Principal Bench, New Delhi through an application filed under Section 19 of the Administrative Tribunal Act praying for quashing of the entire selection and for reconducting of the trials etc. after framing fresh criteria. This OA was filed on 17. 5. 1999 and vide orders dated 11. 11. 1999, the Tribunal dismissed this OA upholding the validity of the criteria and also recording that the same was uniformly applied. However, even before this OA was filed, another person, namely Amar Nath Shukla, who is arrayed as respondent No. 3 herein, had also filed OA No. 1056/1999 on 6. 5. 1999. His grievance was that he had not received call for interview despite the fact that he stood first in the trials for his game, i. e. Chess. Notice in this application was issued and interim order was also passed by the Tribunal directing that he be provisionally interviewed and his selection be kept in a sealed cover. This OA was disposed of on 18. 4. 2002 granting liberty to him to proceed in the matter afresh in accordance with law. The respondent No. 3, being not satisfied with that order, impugned the same by filing WP (C) No. 4145/2002 in this Court. This was, however, dismissed as withdrawn on 16. 9. 2002. Thereafter, in January 2003 he filed another OA 116/2003 in view of the permission granted by the Tribunal in its order dated 18. 4. 2002. The respondent no. 3, this time, succeeded in this efforts as vide judgment dated 24. 8. 2004 the tribunal has allowed the said OA and quashed the appointments of the petitioners in this petition with directions to the Board to conduct the entire exercise of recalculation and preparing the merit list by assuming the marks in the trial to be 100 and not 25, as decided by the Expert Committee constituted by the Board.