Kolkata, Sept. 22 -- The Calcutta High Court has held that a candidate cannot claim OBC reservation on the basis of a certificate issued after the cut-off date prescribed in a recruitment advertisement, particularly when he failed to challenge his exclusion from the reserved category at the provisional-list stage.

A division bench of Justice Madhuresh Prasad and Justice Prasenjit Biswas passed the order on September 18, dismissing Biplab Ghosh's plea against his exclusion from the OBC-B category in the recruitment of fire operators in the West Bengal Fire Services.

Ghosh had applied as an OBC-B candidate under a 2018 PSC advertisement, which required reserved-category certificates to be obtained by the July 3, 2018 closing date. His OBC-B Non-Creamy Layer certificate was issued only on March 29, 2019.

The recruitment was subsequently challenged over alleged irregularities. A co-ordinate Bench directed the PSC to scrutinise reservation certificates and ensure they had been issued by the competent authority on or before the closing date. Candidates whose certificates did not meet the requirement could be considered under the unreserved category if their marks qualified them for appointment.

A provisional merit list published on March 3, 2023 treated Ghosh as an unreserved candidate because his certificate was issued after the cut-off. He was also marked ineligible on account of age. Though the PSC invited objections, Ghosh did not challenge the decision.

The Bench held that the issue had therefore attained finality. Having neither challenged the earlier court directions nor objected to the provisional list, Ghosh could not subsequently challenge the final list published on April 6, 2023.

The court also noted that 1442 candidates had been declared successful, 1417 received appointment letters and 1343 joined. Setting aside the selection at this stage would prejudice the vested rights of nearly 1400 candidates, it said.

Holding that the earlier co-ordinate Bench's decision was binding, the court said it could not grant relief that would effectively amount to sitting in appeal over that decision.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.