Because it reached the recruiting authority after the cut-off date, prayagraj : Holding that an applicant cannot be penalised for delays attributable to the postal system, the Allahabad high court has ruled that a candidate who applied online and dispatched the hard copy of the application within the prescribed period cannot be excluded from the selection process merely.
Accordingly, in its judgment dated Oct 8, the court held that the Commission had erred in returning the hard copy on account of the marginal delay in its postal delivery.
“The recruiting authority, having itself prescribed and sanctioned transmission through registered post/speed post cannot, in the same breath, disown the consequences of that very mode of transmission and visit an otherwise diligent candidate with the drastic civil consequence of exclusion from the selection process,” the court observed. During the hearing, counsel for the Commission submitted that the hard copy, having been received after the prescribed last date, could not be accepted. The court found that the tracking report established timely dispatch and subsequent transit, and that the petitioner had discharged her obligation within time. Nothing on record suggested any lack of diligence on her part. The court relied on the Supreme Court’s decision in Ashutosh Agnihotri v. HC of Madhya Pradesh and another, where an application sent by speed post within time reached the HC a day after the last date and the rejection based on that delay was set aside, with the candidate being held blameless. “The court thus recognised that, where timely dispatch and absence of negligence on the part of the candidate are established, a subsequent delay in postal delivery, being beyond the candidate’s control, cannot by itself constitute a valid ground for exclusion from the selection process.