RITIKA Vs. BHARAT PETROLEUM CORPORATION LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner, who had applied for dealership for an exclusive woman petroleum retail outlet, was found disqualified, although assessed as having secured the highest marks amongst the competitors on the ground that she had been guilty of non-disclosure of a material fact. This was reported to have been pursuant to a field verification that showed that the claim by the petitioner that she was employed as a Sales Manager could not have been true in view of the fact that in respect of the very same period, the petitioner was pursuing a full time regular postgraduate course in engineering. The petitioner was reported to have admitted that she had not been on regular roll of dealership but worked only on week-ends. This was not specifically disclosed and hence, she was found as having concealed, misrepresented and suppression of facts. The counsel for the petitioner refers to her application, where the requirements under Clause 1(f) was the detail regarding the educational qualification which she had disclosed as Bachelor of Engineering and Clause 4 was disclosure of present occupation, where she had filled up the detail as working on petrol pump and in clause 6 to a query of whether she has business/selling experience, the petitioner had responded, "Yes-Sales Manager of the petrol pump." The query in the 7th clause was whether she had experience of supervision of personnel, she had responded by saying, she could handle (such personnel at a petrol pump). The counsel for the petitioner would state that there was no misstatement of fact, for, all that she had stated had been only that she was working in a petrol pump and she had not stated that she was on a full time job. She had only given her completed educational qualification and it was not necessary for her to reveal that she was studying a postgraduate course. If at all, the marks awarded to her was seen to be unmerited, for, she was not doing full time work in petrol pump, the marks assigned for such experience, namely, '4' could be disallowed and she would be still seen as having secured the highest tally.

(2.) The counsel for the respondents point out that the experience certificate was admittedly misleading, in that, it was a certification of an alleged fact that she was working as a Sales Manager from 07.08.2010 till 20.10.2011 when the certificate was issued by a dealer-Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited Obra. Only when it was confronted after a field inspection that she was actually pursuing a full time postgraduate full time course, she sought to explain that she used to work only in the extra time available and not as a full time employee at the petroleum outlet. The counsel for the respondents would draw my attention to the verification that is required to be made in the application that any information given such as, "wrong information/suppression of facts" will disqualify the person from being considered for the dealership.

(3.) I cannot take an argument that it was merely an issue of disallowing 4 marks for not according the benefit of experience. It was surely an attempt on the part of the petitioner to mislead in securing a certificate to make it appear as though it was full time. An argument that the application did not require full time is not really an answer to this issue of misstatement. If a person was declaring that she was working as a Sales Manager in a petrol pump, she was required to state that it was part-time, for, otherwise, it should have only meant a full time. Even the certificate concealed what it was required to disclose, if it was not full time. It should have been possible for a person not to be accorded marks only for part time work, but it must be on a statement as such and cannot come only at the time when a probe is undertaken. Evidently, the petitioner wanted to secure the benefit of maximum possible under each category of grading and if she had given a statement to make it appear as though that she was a full time employee and she had to make a qualification of her statement that she was not full time when confronted by the fact that she was pursuing a postgraduate engineering course full time then she was surely guilty of a statement which was entered and the verification that she had given was in breach.