A higher qualification cannot cure non-compliance with expressly prescribed essential qualifications absent an enabling rule.

The Staff Selection Commission issued a recruitment notification for Statistical Investigator Grade-II in the Office of the Registrar General of India. Clause 8.3.1 required a bachelor’s degree in any subject with Statistics studied as a subject throughout all three years or six semesters of the graduation course.

The applicant held a B.Sc. degree in Mathematics from the University of Calicut, with Statistics and Physics as complementary subjects, and had studied Statistics for only four semesters. She also possessed an M.Sc. in Statistics from the same University.

She applied for the post, participated in the three-tier selection process, and qualified in the written examination. However, during document verification, her candidature was rejected on the ground that she had not studied Statistics in all six semesters of her graduation, notwithstanding her postgraduate qualification in Statistics.

The applicant challenged the rejection before the Tribunal, seeking consideration of her candidature and appointment according to her merit position.

1. Whether the applicant’s M.Sc. degree in Statistics could be treated as satisfying or curing the requirement of having studied Statistics in all three years or six semesters of the bachelor’s degree.

2. Whether the respondents acted illegally or arbitrarily in rejecting the applicant’s candidature at the document-verification stage after permitting her to participate provisionally in the examination.

3. Whether the Tribunal could treat the applicant’s postgraduate qualification as equivalent to the prescribed graduate-level qualification in the absence of an applicable rule or equivalence certificate.

The Tribunal applied Clause 8.3.1 of the recruitment notification, which expressly required Statistics to have been studied in all three years or six semesters of the bachelor’s course.

Clause 14.2 permitted provisional participation in the examination and authorised cancellation of candidature at document verification if the eligibility claim was not substantiated.

The Tribunal relied on Jyoti K.K. v. Kerala Public Service Commission, (2010) 15 SCC 596, for the principle that a higher qualification may presuppose a lower qualification only where the governing service rule so provides or where the higher qualification clearly presupposes the lower one.

It further relied on Chief Manager, Punjab National Bank v. Anit Kumar Das, Md. Firoz Mansuri v. State of Bihar, Zahoor Ahmad Rather v. Sheikh Imtiyaz Ahmad, (2019) 2 SCC 404, and Maharashtra Public Service Commission v. Sandeep Shriram Warade, (2019) 6 SCC 362, for the rule that prescribing qualifications and determining their relevance or equivalence lie primarily within the employer’s domain; courts cannot rewrite recruitment rules or substitute their assessment for that of the recruiting authority, absent arbitrariness or illegality.

The Tribunal found that the applicant admittedly had not studied Statistics throughout all six semesters of her bachelor’s degree and therefore did not satisfy the express requirement in Clause 8.3.1.

Her M.Sc. in Statistics did not automatically establish compliance with a qualification specifically framed at the graduate level.

The applicable recruitment rules contained no provision deeming a higher qualification to include or presuppose the prescribed lower qualification, unlike the statutory rule considered in Jyoti K.K.

Nor had the applicant produced an equivalence certificate establishing that her M.Sc. was equivalent to the required bachelor’s qualification.

The applicant’s participation in the written examination did not create an enforceable right because the notification expressly made candidature provisional and reserved detailed eligibility scrutiny for document verification.

The Registrar General of India had also taken the same position in an earlier case involving a candidate with B.Sc. Mathematics and M.Sc. Statistics who had not studied Statistics throughout the degree course; the Tribunal considered the applicant identically placed.

Since the respondents had uniformly applied the notified eligibility condition and the question of qualification equivalence was within the employer’s domain, no arbitrariness or non-application of mind was established.

The rejection of her candidature at document verification was therefore valid under Clauses 8.3.1 and 14.2 of the notification.

The Original Application was dismissed, and no costs were awarded.