- (1.) : Heard Sri Rajiv Ranjan, learned counsel for the petitioner and J.C. to A.G. for the respondent State.
(2.) THE petitioners grievance in this writ application is that the respondents have illegally refused to allow him to join service on the post of Police Constable inspite of the fact that he was given letter of appointment pursuant to his selection after qualifying in the several tests conducted by the respondents. Sri Rajiv Ranjan would submit that the petitioner had applied for the post in the prescribed format, in response to the advertisement issued by the respondents, way back in 2004. On being called upon to appear at the physical test, the petitioner did appear and had qualified in the test as declared in the results published. Thereafter he was called upon to appear before the Medical Board. He appeared and was declared qualified in the medical test also and thereafter, he was declared selected and an appointment letter was issued to him. Upon receiving the appointment letter, when the petitioner went to join his post in the district of Sahebganj, his joining was refused on the ground that his signature does not tally with the signature appearing on the original application form and also on the photograph pasted on the original application form. Learned counsel submits that on such flimsy grounds the respondent could not possibly cancel the appointment given to the petitioner and that too without affording any opportunity to the petitioner to explain the controversy. It is submitted that even if there was some variance in the signatures, the respondent authorities ought to have got the signatures examined by a competent handwriting expert and furthermore, before arriving at a definite conclusion adverse to the petitioner, the respondent authorities ought to have verified as to whether the petitioner had appeared at the medical and physical tests and had qualified in the same.
(3.) REFERRING to the counter affidavit of the respondents, learned counsel submits that the respondents have not disputed the fact that the petitioner, being the actual applicant, had appeared at the physical and medical tests and in absence of any such dispute, the denial of the petitioners appointment, merely on the basis of some variations in the signatures in the master chart, could not have been cancelled. Learned counsel adds that there could be several explanations offered by the petitioner for the variations in the signatures, had he been given a reasonable opportunity to explain.;