#JudgmentReserved: Supreme Court delivers judgment eight months after reserving it

On April 28, the Supreme Court bench of Justices J Chelameswar and Abhay Manohar Sapre, delivered its judgment in Gohil Vishwaraj Hanubhai & Others v State of Gujarat and Others. It has been authored by Justice Chelameswar. The judgment in this case was reserved by the bench on August 11 last year..This SLP, which was converted as the Civil Appeal, arose out of the Gujarat High Court verdict dated June 27, 2016. The Supreme Court has upheld the High Court order..Bar & Bench throws some light on the “complexity” of this case..In Gujarat Government service, there was a post, known as Talati-cum-Mantri, which was under Panchayat Department. Talati-cum-Mantri was performing duties relating to maintenance, alteration and modification of land records, apart from various other duties. As the State Government decided to computerize the revenue records, it was noticed that the Talati-cum-Mantris were overburdened, and new posts of Revenue Talati were required. In all, 1800 posts were created in 2008..The Revenue Department constituted the Revenue Talati Recruitment Committee, which held a recruitment examination in 2014 to fill these new posts. Meanwhile, large scale malpractices committed in the examination came to the notice of the authorities. After scrutiny, it was found that 127 candidates belonging to one family got selected in the provisional merit list. A list of 178 candidates were also found to have given the same residential address. More complaints of money having exchanged hands and some answer sheets carrying a unique identification letter poured in..Thereupon, the committee cancelled the examination and the recruitment process. More than 7,50,000 candidates appeared at 2691 centres. The petitioners argued before the High Court as well as the Supreme Court that there was no justification to cancel the examination 16 months after it was held, and eight months after the publication of the results, and preparation of provisional merit list. It was contended that the respondents should have taken steps to weed out such candidates found responsible for malpractices, rather than cancelling the entire recruitment process..The State Government contended that mere inclusion in selection list would not confer any right of appointment, and also claimed that it was not possible to segregate tainted and untainted candidates, as large number of answer sheets were found to have some sort of identification marks..Both before the High Court and the Supreme Court, the principle of Wednesbury unreasonableness was carefully considered. A decision which is so outrageous in its defiance of logic or of accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it, could be said to suffer from Wednesbury unreasonableness. It was held that with prima facie proof indicating large scale tampering with the examination process, it cannot be said that its cancellation is so outrageous in its defiance of logic or moral standards..As the Supreme Court held, it is too well settled a principle of law in light of the various earlier decisions of this Court, that where there are allegations of the occurrence of large scale malpractices in the course of the conduct of any examination process, the State or its instrumentalities are entitled to cancel the examination..Besides, the Supreme Court also considered the relevance of the doctrine of proportionality on the ground of violation of Article 14. The Court asked whether by cancelling the recruitment process, those who resorted to malpractice and those who didn’t were treated alike, and whether this amounted to the denial of the equal protection guaranteed under Article 14..Answering this question in the negative, the Court reasoned that by virtue of the cancellation, the innocent candidates as well as the wrong doers got an opportunity of participating in the fresh examination process. But the question whether the innocent ones were punished for no fault of theirs, by forcing them to write the examination twice, because the tainted ones could not be detected, was left unanswered..Well, it may, however, be debatable whether this issue is so complex that it could have merited the inordinate delay of eight months, in delivering the judgment, which still kept an important Constitutional issue involving Article 14 open..Other Highlights.Of the 31 judgments delivered during the week, Justice Kurian Joseph authored nine, all brief non-reportable ones. Justice AK Sikri authored five, while Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre authored three. Justices Arun Misra, Dipak Misra, and Ranjan Gogoi authored two each..Justices AM Khanwilkar, Deepak Gupta, Rohinton Fali Nariman, Prafulla Chandra Pant, Madan B Lokur, NV Ramana, Pinaki Chandra Ghose and J Chelameswar contributed one judgment each. .The following sixteen judgments were reserved during the week. Two of them have already been delivered in the following week..SLP [Civil].Atma Ram Properties Pvt Ltd v The Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd., 17117/2016, Rent Act matter, reserved by Justices J Chelameswar and S.Abdul Nazeer, on April 25. Senior counsel, Dushyant A Dave appeared for the appellant while senior counsel, Vikas Singh represented the respondent. The case arose out of the Delhi high court judgment dated May 30, 2016.Sant Lal v Rajesh and Ors etc., 35534-35535/2013, Compensation Matter – Insurer/Owners Liability, reserved by Justices Arun Mishra and Amitava Roy, on April 26. This arose out of the Punjab and Haryana High Court judgment on August 2, 2013.Arun S/o Shankar Dokhe and Anr v State of Maharashtra and Ors, 2879/2017, Election relating to Gram Panchayats and Zilla Parishad, reserved by Justices Kurian Joseph and AM Khanwilkar, on April 27. This appeal arose out of the Bombay High Court at Aurangabad judgment on January 16 this year.Samir Vidyasagar Bharadwaj v Nandita Samir Bharadwaj, 4385/2017, Family Law matter, reserved by Justices Kurian Joseph and R Banumathi, on April 27. Senior advocate ML Varma appeared for the appellant, while Shyam Divan represented the respondent. This arose out of the Bombay High Court judgment dated January 11 this year..Criminal Appeals.S Subbulaxmi v Kumarasamy &Ors, 1737/2007, reserved by Justices NV Ramana and Prafulla C Pant, on April 27. This arose out of the Madras High Court’s judgment dated March 22, 2005.Neera Yadav v Central Bureau of Investigation, 253/2017, with 251 &252/2017, Matter relating to Prevention of Corruption Act, reserved by Justices Kurian Joseph and R Banumathi, on April 26..Neera Yadav is the former Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh, who has been convicted and sentenced to four years imprisonment, in the Noida plot scam. The High Court found her guilty of illegally allotting land to an industry when she was Noida CEO in 2010. Her second conviction was in a case pertaining to making illegal allotments of lands to relatives, bureaucrats and politicians, in 2012. She was the chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh between 2005 and 2008, when she took voluntary retirement..Senior advocate KV Vishwanathan represented Yadav, while the Solicitor General, Ranjit Kumar, represented the CBI..Kumaran v State of Kerala & Anr, 896-897/2017, reserved by Justices Rohinton Fali Nariman and Navin Sinha, on April 28. This arose out of a Kerala High Court judgment dated August 8, 2012..Arun Kumar v State of Bihar & Ors, 825/2017, Matter filed by Complainant against acquittal, reserved by Justices RK Agrawal and Abhay Manohar Sapre on April 24. Judgment was delivered in this case by Justice Sapre on May 1. The Supreme Court remanded the matter back to the Patna High Court for a fresh consideration of the appeal against acquittal, as it felt, the High court had dismissed the appeal in a cursory manner.. Civil Appeals.Jage Ram (D) Thr.LRS v Union of India & Anr, 5630/2017, Land Acquisition & Requisition Matter – Challenging Compensations, reserved by Justices Dipak Misra, AM Khanwilkar, and Mohan M Shantanagoudar, on April 25. This case arose out of a judgment of the Delhi High Court on November 20, 2014, delivered by Justice Sunil Gaur.Mukund Dewangan v Oriental Insurance Co Ltd., 5826/2011, reserved by Justices Arun Mishra, Amitava Roy and Sanjay Kishan Kaul, on April 25. The case includes a number of similar appeals.Allokam Peddabbayya & Anr v Allahabad Bank & Ors, 2763-2764/2008, Mercantile Laws, Commercial Transactions Including Banking – Banks, Mortgage disputes, reserved by Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Navin Sinha, on April 27. This case arose out of a judgment of the Andhra Pradesh High Court dated March 2, 2006.Jasveer Singh & Anr v State of U.P. & Ors, 3790/2017, Land Acquisition & Requisition Matter, Matters challenging the acquisition proceedings, reserved by Justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and Rohinton Fali Nariman, on April 25. Senior Advocates Shanti Bhushan and Jayant Bhushan represented the appellant, while senior advocate, PN Misra represented the respondent. The judgment in the case was delivered by Justice Goel on May 1. The Supreme Court found the challenge of the appellants to the land acquisition barred by laches, and dismissed it.State of Uttar Pradesh & Ors v Shiv Kumar Pathak & Ors, 4347-4375/2014, Service Matters – Recruitment/Transfer/Compassionate Appointment, reserved by Justices Goel and Uday Umesh Lalit, on April 27. Many senior advocates represented different parties in this case..Transfer Petition [Civil].Milap Choraria v Sanjay Kumar Jhunjhunwala & Ors, 644/2012, reserved by Justices Kurian Joseph and R Banumathi, on April 25.. Writ Petitions [Civil].Swaraj Abhiyan v Union of India, 857/2015, reserved by Justices Madan B Lokur and NV Ramana, on April 27. This is an ongoing case, in which the bench, is reviewing the drought relief measures being undertaken by the State Governments. On April 27, the bench reserved its judgment, after hearing submissions by the parties on some of the issues relating to National Food Security Act, 2013. For consideration of the issue on MNREGA, the case will be listed before the bench on August 9.Gaurav Kumar Bansal v Union of India & Ors, 444/2013 & 823/2013, reserved by Justices Lokur and Deepak Gupta on April 28. This matter, involving the disaster preparedness of the Central and State Governments, was previously heard by a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra. The second petition, tagged to it, was filed by Foundation for Restoration of National Values.