In a bunch of writ petitions, the Division bench of the Orissa High Court upheld the judgment of the learned Single judge where it was seen that the ground for disqualification of the appellants was the fact that their residence certificates were forged and were canceled by the Tahsildar and not because they did not have a permanent residence certificate of the block ( a requirement that was previously held unconstitutional by the court)
Brief Facts:
All the appeals are directed against the judgment dated 8th January 2015 passed by the learned Single Judge dismissing the writ petitions filed by the appellants.
An advertisement was issued on 14th October 2006 by the Director of Elementary Education inviting applications for the recruitment of the Sikshya Sahayak (SS) in Upper and Primary Schools of the different Blocks in the district of Khurda. A blockwise vacancy was mentioned in the advertisement and it was mentioned that “only a permanent resident of a block can apply to the said Block”. The appellants had applied pursuant to this advertisement with residential certificates.
The stipulation that only a permanent resident of a Block can apply to the said Block was questioned in this Court by two of the Applicants (not the present Appellants) and the same was held to be unconstitutional in the judgment of Chandramani Jena v. State of Orissa. it was held that a candidate who was otherwise eligible cannot be debarred from being appointed as an SS on the sole ground of residence and accordingly an order was passed.
Then a second batch of writ petitions was filed in the case of Prasan Kumar Rana v. State of Orissa, contending that despite the above-mentioned judgment, their names came up in the merit list, but the petitioners were not given the appointment only on the ground that they did not satisfy the residence requirement. Here the opposite parties were asked to work in accordance with the Chandramani judgment.
Then the present case was filed and here it was pointed out by the state that the residence certificates of the petitioners were not found to be genuine for which their candidatures were rejected and they are not covered by the Chandramani judgment. The collector, Khurda passed the order that the residence certificates of all the petitioners were forged and that is why they were not covered by the Chandramani Judgment. The same was challenged through a writ petition, which was dismissed by the learned single judge and that is why the present appeal arose.
Observations of the Court:
The court noted the stand of the state and held that the present appellants cannot claim parity with the appellants in previous judgments in Chandramani Jena v. State of Orissa or Prasan Kumar Rana v. State of Orissa.
The decision of the Court:
No grounds of interference were found in the current writ appeals and accordingly, they were dismissed.
Case Title: Harapriya Mohapatra and Others v. State of Odisha and Others
Coram: Chief Justice Dr. S. Muralidhar; Justice G. Satapathy
Case No.: W.A. No. 265, 266, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 286, 287, 288, and 458 of 2015
Advocate for the Appellants: Mr. B.D. Satpathy, Advocate (In W.A. No.265 of 2015)
Advocate for the Respondent: Mr. M.K. Khuntia, Additional Government Advocate
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