Conditional Appointment May Be Withdrawn for Failure to Demonstrate Prescribed Post-Qualification Experience During Verification.

The Petitioner applied for the post of Supervisor (Personnel Administration) at Solar Energy Corporation of India Ltd. (SECI) under Recruitment Notification No. 01/2021.

The advertisement required graduation plus "01 year of post-qualification experience in field of Personnel Administration".

The Petitioner claimed experience as a "Junior Assistant" at the National Institute of Immunology (NII).

She was provisionally selected and joined SECI on February 7, 2022, subject to verification of her credentials.

Upon verification, NII informed SECI that the Petitioner was an outsourced staff member whose duties were restricted to Hindi typing, filing, and day-to-day office work, and disowned an experience certificate she had submitted.

Consequently, SECI issued a communication dated November 3, 2022, withdrawing her offer and terminating her services.

1. Whether the Petitioner possessed the prescribed "01 year of post-qualification experience in field of Personnel Administration" as required by the recruitment notification.

2. Whether SECI was justified in withdrawing the offer of appointment upon verification of eligibility and documents.

3. Whether the Petitioner is entitled to reinstatement or other relief.

In public recruitment, eligibility criteria must be strictly adhered to and cannot be diluted by the court or the recruiter.

Eligibility must be assessed as of the cut-off date prescribed in the advertisement as per Rakesh Kumar Sharma v. State (NCT of Delhi).

Where an appointment is conditional upon verification, the employer retains the right to act on the results of such verification, and the candidate acquires no indefeasible right to the post as held in Satish Chandra Yadav v. Union of India and Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Prasaran Nigam Ltd. v. Anil Kanwariya.

The prescribed experience was not merely "employment" but specific experience in "Personnel Administration".

The documents produced by the Petitioner only established her role as a "Junior Assistant" performing clerical tasks like typing and filing, which does not satisfy the specialized requirement.

Assisting in administrative offices does not equate to professional experience in the field of P due to the lack of "reliable contemporaneous record".

The appointment was "expressly conditional" and subsequent experience gained at SECI could not cure the initial lack of eligibility because the cut-off date is sacrosanct.

Termination based on a failure to meet threshold documentary eligibility rather than misconduct does not require a full disciplinary inquiry under Natural Justice.

The Court answered the issues in the negative, finding SECI’s withdrawal of the appointment justified and non-punitive.

The writ petition was dismissed, affirming that the Petitioner had no enforceable right to continue in service due to non-fulfillment of the advertised recruitment specifications.