Ajay Rastogi, J. - (1.) INSTANT petition is directed against order of the ld. Central Admininstrative Tribunal dt. 12.12.2014.
(2.) BRIEF facts of the case which emerge from the record are that the petitioner is a member of OBC Category and the North -Western Railway issued an employment notice No. 2/2010 dt. 16.12.2010 for recruitment against Group 'D' post in various categories. The selection process was initiated for approximately 1800 vacancies of Group 'D' category.
(3.) PURSUANCE to the employment notice, the petitioner applied for the Group 'D' post and appeared in the written examination in which he was declared successful and thereafter qualified the Physical Efficiency Test (PET) and indisputably, his name find place in the select list for being appointed in Group 'D' posts and thereafter he was called for document verification by issuing attendance slip (Ann. A/8) dt. 23.01.2013 and all of his documents were verified and he was awaiting offer of appointment but remained shocked when he received the impugned communication dt. 25.07.2013 informing that his application form has been rejected on account of wrong mentioning of his date of birth as 20.07.1984 instead of 22.07.1984, indicated in his Secondary School Board Certificate which he annexed along with his application form and this human error was considered to be an irregularity under Cl. 8.11(xvi) of the conditions of Advertisement declaring his application form to be invalid vide communication dt. 25.07.2013, which was the subject matter of challenge by filing of original application before the ld. Tribunal and the ld. Tribunal dismissed the Original Application on the premise that incorrect date of birth which was mentioned in his application form, even if supported with the Secondary School Board Certificate annexed along with his application form but being an error in the application form which indisputably has been committed by him, it was considered to be a deemed irregularity invoking Cl. 8.11(xvi) of the conditions of Advertisement and accordingly, no error has been committed by the respondent while rejecting his application form declaring it to be invalid vide order dt. 25.07.2013 under order impugned dt. 12.12.2014 which is subject matter of challenge in the instant writ petition. Counsel for the petitioner submits that Cl. 8.11(xvi) of the condition of advertisement has been wrongly invoked and is not applicable to the case of the present petitioner and further submits that he is a member of OBC and minimum and maximum age limit prescribed for appointment, as per the advertisement, was 18 and 33 years and as per his date of birth, it comes to 27 years at the time of submission of the application form and as such behind mentioning of two days elder age, there could not be any intention of the petitioner to get undue advantage and is a mere human error, as such, the selection of the petitioner cannot be cancelled by declaring his application form to be invalid invoking Cl. 8.11(xvi) of the conditions of Advertisement and such human error cannot be considered and termed as deemed irregularity. Hence, rejection of application form of the petitioner, on this count, is wholly arbitrary and not legally sustainable in law and the petitioner could not be deprived of seeking appointment after being placed in the order of merit for the post of Group 'D' Category which is a cadre of Class -IV.;