Candidates cannot be denied NCL/EWS reservation for post-deadline certificates absent a prescribed cutoff date.

The petitioners applied under Advertisement No. 14/2023 for Lady Supervisor posts and were declared successful. At document verification, they submitted Non-Creamy Layer (NCL) or Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) certificates issued after the application deadline.

After the State sought further verification, it issued show-cause notices on the ground that the certificates post-dated that deadline. The petitioners challenged those notices, contending that neither the recruitment rules nor the advertisement required the certificates to be issued or held by the application deadline. The JSSC had recommended their names for appointment, but appointment letters were withheld pending resolution of the certificate issue.

Whether NCL/EWS certificates issued after the application deadline, but submitted at document verification, could be accepted for claiming the relevant reservation benefit in the Lady Supervisor recruitment.

The Court interpreted Clauses 5, 11, 12 and 13 of the advertisement as requiring candidates to meet the specified educational qualification by the application deadline, while requiring relevant certificates to be produced at document verification; it found no express requirement that NCL/EWS certificates be held by the deadline.

It applied the principle that an eligibility or disqualification condition absent from the recruitment rules and advertisement cannot be introduced during verification.

Relying on Mahadeo v. Sovan Devi, (2023) 10 SCC 807, it noted that inter-departmental communications cannot, by themselves, form the basis of a claim to a right.

The Court distinguished Divya v. Union of India, (2024) 1 SCC 448, Poonam Dwivedi v. State of U.P., 2026 SCC OnLine SC 577, UPSC v. Gaurav Singh, (2024) 2 SCC 605, and Dr. Nutan Indwar v. State of Jharkhand, L.P.A. No. 64 of 2020, on the basis that the governing rules or advertisement in those cases contained a specific certificate-related cut-off requirement, unlike the present recruitment.

The Court found that the advertisement specified the deadline for the educational qualification but did not prescribe a deadline by which the petitioners had to obtain or possess their NCL/EWS certificates. The certificates were in the prescribed format, and the State’s objection was limited to their having been issued after the application deadline.

The Court held that the State could not impose a certificate cut-off absent from the recruitment rules and advertisement. It further considered the State’s reliance on the 2019 departmental letter and circular misplaced: the letter did not establish the asserted certificate deadline, and the circular concerned reservation in civil services and posts and was not referred to in the advertisement.

The cited precedents did not alter the result because, as the Court distinguished them, they involved an express certificate deadline.

The Court quashed the show-cause notices dated 25 May 2026, and directed the respondents to treat the petitioners as NCL/EWS candidates and appoint them against the corresponding vacancies, with consequential benefits. The necessary orders were to be issued within six weeks; all writ petitions were allowed.