BEANT SINGH Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB AND ORS.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner applied for the subject matter post to be filled by way of direct recruitment. He had reached near the stage of counselling. The appointed date of counselling was effected through publication in newspapers and not just on the official website of the Department which was notified in the advertisement for candidates to keep themselves abreast. The petitioner complains he did not come to know of those dates and thus lost his valuable chance to appear during the counselling process which has resulted in consequences adverse to his interest. If that be the position then the petitioner would be deemed in law to have constructive notice of the dates of counselling and if he failed to turn up to keep himself in the running for the post advertised he faltered at his own peril. Merely because he is shortly turning overage for Government service would not justify the writ court to interfere in the matter and pass orders in his favour for review counselling on sympathetic grounds directing by a mandamus the consideration of his candidature only for the reason that he falls in the zone of selection at the stage prior to counselling. The question of knowledge of a public notice duly notified in the press or of regularly visiting the official website to keep track of the ongoing selection process will be a seriously disputed question of fact, which in absence of any material particulars pleaded in the petition in this regard, cannot be effectively resolved in summary writ proceedings where cases are usually adjudicated on the basis of affidavits filed by the parties. Such an issue is best left to the civil courts to decide on the basis of evidence of date of knowledge of counselling, in case an action is brought which the petitioner was always free to invoke.

(2.) A caveat needs to be entered here on a revist to the settled position that the power to issue writs in relation to an alternate remedy has been considered as a rule of self imposed limitation. It is essentially a rule of policy, convenience and discretion and never a rule of law. Alternate remedy has nothing to do with jurisdiction. Therefore, I do not go far enough to say that the writ court cannot interefere at all in such a case but any interference will be beyond judicially manageable standards as known to writ jurisdiction and call upon itself to decide pure questions of fact on discretionary principles and not rules of evidence in proof of facts seriously disputable. Imagine the State appearing on summons unable to admit or deny the imputation of lack of knowledge of its notices placed in newspapers and on the internet. If they deny the assertion for want of knowledge, the writ court will begin to flounder to return a positive finding groping in the dark. Anything said either way will be guesswork. Judicial opinions which bind ought not to be based on speculation, hypothesizing or theorizing from a set of indeterminate and fluid facts. For these reasons I would shy away from putting this case in the adversarial arena by issuing notice of motion only to waste further time on such a matter except what is spent in passing this order to disclose the process of reasoning adopted which is demanded from this Court when the order is put under judicial review in appeal.

(3.) This is not an appropriate case for the writ court to issue notice to the respondents and call for the defence of the State since there are insufficient and unpredictable pleadings in the writ petition in order to prima facie secure the relief claimed. It might have been a quite a different matter had the rules of the advertisement required the respondent department to serve notices to the candidates on the dates of counselling individually, which is not the case.