Aspirants possess no legal right to appointment or to compel the State to fill vacancies.

The Respondent, Rajiv Kumar, filed a writ petition (CWJC No. 13369 of 2024) seeking a writ of mandamus to compel the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) to publish a supplementary or revised merit list for primary school teachers (Class I to V) under Advertisement No. 26 of 2023.

The Respondent argued that vacancies remained in the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category due to the disqualification of provisionally successful candidates who failed to pass CTET or D.El.Ed. examinations.

On 05.09.2024, a Single Judge of the Patna High Court disposed of the writ petition by following the directions issued in Dhirendra Kumar & Ors. v. The State of Bihar (CWJC No. 1151 of 2024), which had mandated the state to identify such vacancies and publish supplementary results.

The State of Bihar challenged this order through the present Letters Patent Appeal (LPA), noting that the precedent relied upon (Dhirendra Kumar) had since been set aside by a Division Bench.

1. Whether a candidate has a vested legal right to claim appointment or demand the publication of a supplementary merit list for unfilled vacancies.

2. Whether the Single Judge’s order could be sustained given that the foundational precedent (Dhirendra Kumar) was overturned by a Division Bench.

The Court relied on the established principle that there is no fundamental legal right to appointment, but only a right to be considered, provided the State acts bona fide. This rule was derived from Shankarsan Dash v. Union of India (1991) 3 SCC 47, R.S. Mittal v. Union of India (1995 Supp (2) SCC 230), and Food Corporation of India v. Bhanu Lodh (2005) 3 SCC 618.

Furthermore, while an employer is not bound to fill all advertised posts, the discretion to leave posts vacant must be exercised judiciously and not in an arbitrary or whimsical manner, as per Dinesh Kumar Kashyap & Ors. v. South East Central Railway (2019) 12 SCC 798.

The Division Bench observed that the Single Judge’s directions were entirely based on the judgment in CWJC No. 1151 of 2024 (Dhirendra Kumar).

However, that judgment had been subsequently challenged and set aside by a coordinate Division Bench in LPA No. 1030 of 2024 on 08.04.2025.

The Court reasoned that since the governing precedent held that aspirants possess no legal right to compel the State to fill vacancies—absent proof of arbitrariness or mala fides—the directions to publish a supplementary list were legally unsustainable.

The Court found that the State has the discretion to merge leftover vacancies into future recruitment cycles rather than exhausting the current merit list.

On the merits, the Division Bench allowed the LPA and set aside the order of the Single Judge. It held that the Respondent had no legal right to demand a supplementary merit list, and the case was disposed of in alignment with the decision in LPA No. 1030 of 2024, which concluded that such judicial interference in the State's recruitment discretion was not fit for sustainment.