Team Blitz India
NEW DELHI: Twenty-eight years after a man applied for a job in the postal department, the Supreme Court has ordered his appointment noting that there was an error in holding him ineligible for the post.
Ankur Gupta had applied for the post of postal assistant in 1995. After being selected for pre-induction training, he was later excluded from the merit list on the ground that he completed intermediate education from the ‘vocational stream.’
Ankur Gupta along with other unsuccessful candidates moved the Central Administrative Tribunal which ruled in their favour in 1999. The postal department challenged the tribunal’s order and approached the Allahabad High Court in 2000.
The High Court dismissed the petition in 2017 and upheld the CAT’s order. A review was filed in the High Court which was also dismissed in 2021, following which the department approached the Supreme Court.
In the Apex court, a bench of justices Bela M Trivedi and Dipankar Datta said a candidate cannot claim a vested right to appointment, once he is included in the merit list, he has a limited right of being accorded a fair treatment.
