Wait-listed candidates are entitled to equal treatment when similarly placed peers are appointed after the list expires.

The petitioner applied for contractual Village Agriculture Worker (VAW) recruitment in Kalahandi district. He was placed at Sl. No. 8 in the waiting list published on 2 May 2011.

While appointments were pending, an interim order in another writ petition made appointments subject to its outcome; the petitioner and three other wait-listed candidates sought intervention in that case. After that petition was disposed of on 12 April 2012, three intervenors were appointed on 4 May 2012, although the waiting-list validity period of 180 days had expired. The petitioner was not appointed.

The authorities rejected a request to extend the waiting list’s validity, and he challenged that rejection. The High Court had meanwhile directed that one post be kept vacant pending disposal of his petition.

1. Whether the petitioner, as a similarly situated intervenor on the waiting list, was entitled to appointment when three other intervenors were appointed after the waiting list had expired.

2. Whether the communication rejecting the request to extend the waiting list’s validity should be quashed.

The judgment identifies no specific statutory provision, precedent, or express constitutional doctrine as the basis of its decision.

It applies the principle of equal treatment of similarly situated candidates: where three intervenors from the same waiting list were appointed after the list’s validity had expired, the petitioner, found to be similarly situated, should receive the same benefit.

Although the petition was brought under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution, the judgment does not separately discuss their governing principles.

The Court found that the petitioner was on the same waiting list as the three intervenors who received appointments on 4 May 2012, after the 180-day validity period had expired.

Because the authorities had appointed those candidates after disposal of the related writ petition, the expiry of the list did not justify withholding the same benefit from the petitioner. The Court therefore found no occasion for the authority to seek clarification about extending the list’s validity in his case, or for the rejection of that request.

It directed the authorities to appoint the petitioner with effect from the date the other three intervenors were appointed, 4 May 2012, with consequential service benefits and financial benefits on a notional basis. The exercise was to be completed within six weeks of receipt of the order. The writ petition was disposed of.