The Supreme Court has rejected the petition of several candidates requesting reservation under the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category in the recruitment process of Uttar Pradesh. The court says that invalid income certificates cannot be the basis for claiming such benefits.
Poonam Dwivedi and other candidates had filed these petitions. In these petitions, the order of the Allahabad High Court was challenged, in which his argument was rejected. Upholding the High Court’s decision, a bench comprising Justices Manoj Mishra and Prasanna B Varale said that as per the recruitment rules, the candidate failed to produce a valid EWS certificate for the relevant financial year.
The court said, ‘If the certificates produced by the appellants did not pertain to the financial year preceding the year of application and were issued before the end of the relevant financial year, then there was a clear defect in those certificates.’
“Therefore, in our opinion, the claim of the appellants on the basis of those certificates has been rightly rejected,” the order said. The case pertains to the recruitment of more than 9,000 posts of women health workers in the state, where some candidates who had applied under the EWS category were left out of the final list despite passing the written examination.
The candidates argued that the discrepancies in their certificates were due to errors on the part of the issuing authorities and confusion regarding the applicable financial year. Rejecting this contention, the bench said that the certificates were either issued before the end of the relevant financial year or related to the wrong period.
The bench said, ‘This court is of the opinion that when a certificate is sought in respect of a particular financial year, the certificate of some other financial year is the basic basis of eligibility of the candidate.’ The Court emphasized that to avail the benefits of EWS reservation, the certificate of income and assets should relate to the financial year preceding the year of application and should be valid till the ‘cut-off’ date.
The Supreme Court also said that candidates cannot blame the authorities for issuing wrong certificates, especially when most of them had already obtained the documents before the release of the advertisement and could have obtained fresh certificates in compliance with the eligibility conditions.
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