Failure to countersign an experience certificate is a curable procedural defect, not an eligibility failure.

Respondent No. 3 issued an advertisement dated 04.03.2024 inviting applications for 12 contractual posts of Group Instructor, including two posts reserved for OBC (UR) candidates.

Clause 16 of the advertisement required candidates to submit experience certificates demonstrating post-qualification experience and stipulated that such certificates “should be duly verified/countersigned” by the concerned Government Authority or Departmental Officer.

During document verification, respondent No. 4 was found to have submitted experience certificates that were not verified or countersigned.

By public notice dated 03.03.2026, respondent No. 3 granted candidates, including respondent No. 4, time to rectify specified deficiencies by 12.03.2026, failing which their candidature would be rejected.

The result declared on 25.03.2026 did not include either the petitioner or respondent No. 4 in the select list. However, respondent No. 4 stood first and the petitioner second in the OBC (UR) waiting list, both securing 71.50 marks.

Whether the requirement that an experience certificate be verified or countersigned by a Government Authority or Departmental Officer was an essential eligibility condition or merely a curable procedural requirement?

Whether respondent No. 3 acted unlawfully or arbitrarily in granting respondent No. 4 and similarly situated candidates a fixed period to rectify the defect in their experience certificates after document verification?

Whether the petitioner was entitled to exclusion of respondent No. 4 and appointment against the OBC (UR) post?

The Court applied the Recruitment and Promotion Rules dated 05.12.2022, which prescribed the requisite post-qualification experience but did not require experience certificates to be countersigned or verified by a specified authority.

The Court distinguished between an illegal appointment and an appointment involving a procedural irregularity, holding that a procedural deviation does not render an appointment illegal unless it contravenes statutory provisions or is made without an available post, relying on Pawan Kumar Tiwary & Others v. Jharkhand State Electricity Board (Now Jharkhand Urja Vikas Nigam Limited) & Others, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 1751.

The Court also relied on Sunita Devi v. Himachal Pradesh Staff Selection Commission & Others, CWP No. 3035 of 2019, decided on 25.11.2019, for the principle that technical defects in certificates or applications may be treated as curable where the candidate substantively satisfies the eligibility conditions.

Further, relying on Vashist Narayan Kumar v. State of Bihar & Others, (2024) 11 SCC 785, the Court held that candidature should not be rejected for trivial or curable omissions absent material misrepresentation or failure to satisfy an essential qualification.

The Court held that the substantive eligibility requirement was possession of the prescribed post-qualification practical experience, not countersigning of the experience certificate.

The applicable amended Recruitment and Promotion Rules did not prescribe countersigning or identify any particular authority competent to verify the certificate.

Clause 16 was a general checklist provision and did not create an additional statutory qualification. Therefore, the absence of countersigning at the time of document verification constituted a procedural and curable defect, rather than proof that respondent No. 4 lacked the required experience.

By giving all similarly situated candidates a defined period to rectify such defects, respondent No. 3 acted in the larger interest of fair consideration and did not waive the requirement of possessing the requisite experience as on the relevant date.

The subsequent countersigning merely regularised the form or verification of an already-existing experience certificate; it did not confer eligibility retrospectively.

The Court also noted that the validity or genuineness of respondent No. 4’s experience certificate had not been adjudicated in the proceedings.

The writ petition seeking rejection of respondent No. 4’s candidature and appointment of the petitioner was therefore dismissed.

The Court expressly clarified that it had not examined the substantive validity of respondent No. 4’s experience certificate.

Pending miscellaneous applications, if any, were also disposed of.