A Later Bridge Course Cannot Cure Failure to Meet Recruitment Eligibility Within the Prescribed Period.

The petitioner applied under the 1998 advertisement for Teacher Grade-III and claimed to have scored 71.56%.

His Senior Secondary (Vocational) qualification was not accepted as equivalent to Senior Secondary (Academic); the respondents required vocational candidates to pass a bridge course in 1999.

The petitioner failed the 1999 examination but passed the course in 2000.

He alleged that a less-meritorious candidate had been appointed and sought appointment with consequential benefits, or alternatively the cancellation of that candidate’s appointment.

After making representations and relying on earlier judgments, the petitioner filed this writ petition in 2006; the Court noted that he had not challenged the non-selection within a reasonable time.

Whether Senior Secondary (Vocational) was equivalent to Senior Secondary (Academic) for the recruitment, so that the petitioner could claim eligibility without the prescribed bridge course.

Whether passing the bridge course in 2000 satisfied the eligibility requirement stated by the respondents to have applied to the 1998 recruitment.

Whether the petitioner was entitled to relief despite the delay in approaching the Court and his reliance on the appointment of another candidate.

Article 226 jurisdiction is discretionary, and relief may be refused where a petitioner approaches the Court after an inordinate and unexplained delay; repeated representations do not, without a fresh and sustainable cause of action, revive a stale claim.

Eligibility is ordinarily determined by the recruitment rules and conditions applicable to the selection, and a qualification acquired later does not cure an earlier failure unless the governing rules or recruitment terms permit it.

In Sunita Sharma v. State of Rajasthan, the Supreme Court expressly confined its decision to the circumstances of those appeals and stated that it was not to be treated as a precedent; Virendra Singh v. State of Rajasthan upheld the view that Senior Secondary (Vocational) was not equivalent to Senior Secondary (Academic).

Relief granted to another candidate does not automatically confer an enforceable right to identical relief; the claimant must establish an independent legal right.

The Court held that Sunita Sharma did not establish a general rule of equivalence, particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s subsequent decision in Virendra Singh.

The petitioner therefore could not avoid the bridge-course requirement on the basis of his vocational qualification.

Nor did his passing the course in 2000 establish eligibility for this recruitment: he had failed the 1999 examination, and he identified no rule permitting later completion to cure that failure.

The Court also found the delay—more than seven years after the 1998 recruitment, and nearly three years after the cited 2003 judgment—unjustified; representations did not remedy it.

The alleged appointment of a less-meritorious candidate did not independently establish the petitioner’s entitlement.

Finding unexplained delay, failure to establish the required eligibility within the prescribed period, and no enforceable right based on the alleged comparator, it dismissed the writ petition and all pending applications.