HC terms giving additional marks to ‘GATE passed candidates as unconstitutional

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court termed giving 10 per cent additional marks to candidates who have passed the Graduation Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE ) while filling the posts of trainee graduate engineers in the Mahavitran Company as unconstitutional.

Justice S G Mehere and Justice Shailesh Brahme allowed to submission of the petition and issued directives for preparing a revised selection list excluding the 10 per cent additional marks given to GATE pass candidates. The court directed to issue the appointment orders within 3 weeks.

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What was the petition?

An advertisement was published to fill 320 posts of trainee graduate engineers in the Mahavitran Company. The candidates were to be selected through a competitive examination. But, the company amended the advertisement through a corrigendum and decided to give 10 per cent additional marks to candidates who had passed the GATE. Nitin Rathod and other candidates who had not passed the GATE challenged this in the bench through adv Syed Tausif Yasin.

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High Court's conclusions

--Giving more marks to candidates who have passed the GATE will actually result in the selection of candidates who have secured less marks. This will defeat the criterion of 'merit-based' selection in competitive examinations, which is in violation of the fundamental right to equality guaranteed under Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution.

--It cannot be said that recruiting a talented workforce to meet future challenges can be achieved only by selecting candidates who have passed the GATE.

--As part of the selection process, a written test was conducted for the candidates and it was sufficient to ascertain their talent and ability. Giving more marks to candidates belonging to a particular category in the selection process is discriminatory and violates the fundamental right to equality guaranteed under Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. Therefore, the condition is unconstitutional.

--The bench has observed that implementing the said rule without amending the 2005 Recruitment Rules is illegal.