UNION OF INDIA Vs. MONALIZA LYNGDOH MAWPHLANG

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petition is directed against an order dated February 24, 2020 passed by the Guwahati Bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) on the respondent's application before such Tribunal. The grievance carried by the respondent to the CAT was that despite a recruitment process initiated by North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS) by an advertisement of July 6, 2017 and such process being successfully concluded and the two petitioners before the Tribunal being selected to be anointed as Associate Professor in general medicine and gynaecology, respectively, the entire process was sought to be arbitrarily undone pursuant to a communication dated September 27, 2018 issued by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (NE Sec. ) to the Director of NEIGRIHMS, Shillong.

(2.) The relevant communication of September 27, 2018, as far as the recruitment process commenced by the advertisement of July 6, 2017 was concerned, had this to say at paragraph 4 thereof:

(3.) The communication was issued by an under-secretary to the Union and it is alarming that such matters are so irresponsibly handled that not a line of reason is expended to justify why a process that had been initiated more than a year back was required to be set at naught after it had been completed and the appropriate personnel selected in course thereof. In a rare case, it is possible that there is some fundamental mistake made in the advertisement as to the qualifications or such as would render the process contrary to the object of the exercise. There is no doubt that the decision to quash the advertisement of July 6, 2017 may have been on as flimsy a ground as a 't' therein not being crossed or an 'i' not dotted. Indeed, in the absence of reasons, the reasonableness of the decision to quash the advertisement cannot be assessed.