Courts Should Avoid Interference When Appointing Authority Has Accepted Equivalence Of Qualifications: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court yesterday, observed that, while recruiting, if the appointing authority has not objected to the candidate's qualifications and there is no glaring difference between the specified qualification and the candidate's qualification, the Court's interference by setting aside the appointment is unwarranted. Reliance was placed on the recent decision in Union of India v Uzair Imran, wherein the Court had held: “Normally, it is not the function of the court to determine equivalence of two qualifications and/or to scrutinise a particular certificate and say, on the basis of its appreciation thereof, that the holder thereof satisfies the eligibility criteria and, thus, is qualified for appointment.” Essentially, in the present case, the Department of Electricity, Lakshadweep, had issued an The dispute started when the respondents' names were not included on the Select List. Pursuant to this, the aforementioned “Given that the recruiting authority had sought a clarification on whether a Diploma in Electrical and Electronics Engineering is equivalent to a Diploma in Electrical Engineering and accepted a clarification to the effect, we do not see any reason in denying such an equivalence for the purposes of the Elaborating, the Court said that the recruiting authority had scrutinised the qualifications. There is nothing on record to show that they had adduced any convincing material evidence to prove that the qualifications prescribed are very different from the qualifications possessed by the appellants… The entire case of the respondents is based on the difference in nomenclatures of the two diplomas which stops there and has nothing to do with the core substance of the courses, including teaching, duration, curriculum or the pedagogy.” Reliance was also placed on Uma Shankar Sharma v. Union of India, 3 SCC 202., to highlight that the terms and conditions of service should be interpreted reasonably, while not resorting to a technical view.