SATYANARAYAN PALAI Vs. ODISHA GRAMYA BANK

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner, who was an applicant for the post of Office Assistant (Multipurpose), pursuant to online advertisement issued on 22.07.2017 for Common Recruitment Process for Recruitment of Officers (Scale-I, II & III) and Office Assistant (Multipurpose) in Regional Rural Banks (RRBs)-CRP, RRBs-VI, has filed this application challenging rejection of his candidature during verification of original documents on the ground that at the time of uploading the application through online, his date of birth was indicated as "01.07.1988" though his actual date of birth is "01.06.1988."

(2.) The factual matrix of the case, in hand, is that Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) published an advertisement on 22.07.2017 for Common Recruitment Process for Recruitment of Officers (Scale-I, II & III) and Office Assistant (Multipurpose) in Regional Rural Banks (RRBs)-CRP, RRBs-VI, which was to be conducted between September and November, 2017. The eligibility criteria were prescribed, including the age and educational qualifications. In the said advertisement, age was prescribed between 18 years to 28 years, i.e., the candidate should have not been born earlier than 02.07.1989 and later than 01.07.1999 (both dates inclusive). The persons with benchmark disability, as defined under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, would be given 10 years relaxation. The educational qualification was prescribed that the candidate must be a Bachelor's Degree in any discipline from a recognized University or its equivalent with proficiency in local language as prescribed by the participating RRBs and working knowledge in computer was desirable. The petitioner, being differently disabled person and is suffering from BH-Ateral moderately severe mixed hearing loss of 48% and with his disability he tried to have a decent living and was otherwise found himself eligible for applying the post of Office Assistant (Multipurpose), submitted his application through online within the prescribed time with prescribed manner on payment of requisite fees. On consideration of his qualification, he was called for online preliminary examination with Roll No.2470802787. The date of examination was fixed to 23.09.2017 and reporting time was 2.45 P.M. The venue of the examination was fixed at ION Digital IDZ Golanthara, Roland Institute of Technology, Surya Vihar, Golanthara, Berhampur, Ganjam, Odisha-761008.

(3.) Ms. Sujata Jena, learned counsel for the petitioner contended that in all the documents filed by the petitioner, his date of birth was mentioned as "01.06.1988", but while submitting the application through online, pursuant to advertisement issued under Annexure-1, inadvertently his date of birth was entered in the application form as "01.07.1988", which was detected when he went for verification of documents. Therefore, the petitioner immediately filed an affidavit to that extent. It is contended that the mistake, which has been committed was bona fide one, which will not materially affect the selection process, so far as age of the petitioner is concerned, and it will never go to the root of the matter to deprive the petitioner from participating in the process of selection. As such, the petitioner had no intention to defraud anybody by furnishing his date of birth as "01.07.1988" in place of "01.06.1988. But his request was not acceded to and direction was given to approach the IBPS for correction of the same and consequentially his application was rejected. It is further contended that the IBPS is only concerned about the advertisement, conduct of the examination process and provisionally allot the candidates so selected by it to the concerned participating banks and, as such, it has no role in the further selection process. Therefore, informing the IBPS about the mistake in the application form regarding date of birth cannot have any justification and, as such, after the process of selection was over and after provisional allotment of candidates to the concerned participating banks, the IBPS became functus officio. Thereby, the mistake which has been committed can only be rectified by the opposite party-bank, but instead of doing so, the bank has rejected the same. Therefore, the petitioner seeks for interference of this Court.