'Mountain out of molehill,' SC sets aside cancellation of constable's selection due to error in entering date of birth

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday said the selection of a candidate cannot be cancelled due to an inadvertent error in filling up of date of birth in the online application form from a cyber cafe.

A bench of Justices J K Maheshwari and K V Vishwanathan directed the Bihar government to consider appellant Vashist Narayan Kumar as "passed" with his date of birth as December 18, 1997, and issue a necessary appointment letter to the post of police constable.

Kumar's selection was cancelled as he mentioned his date of birth wrongly as December 08, 1997.

Writing the judgment, Justice Vishwanathan set aside the Patna High Court's order, which said the appellant did not seek quashing of the results, observing a writ court has power to mould relief and Justice can't be sacrificed on the altar of technicalities.

Going through the facts of the case, the court found, "It is a trivial error which appears to be a genuine and bona fide mistake. It will be unjust to penalise the appellant for the same."

The court said the exception for trivial errors or omissions is for the reason that law does not concern itself with trifles.

"The error in the application is trivial which did not play any part in the selection process. The State was not justified in making a mountain out of this molehill. Perhaps the rarefied atmosphere of the cyber cafe, got the better of the appellant. He omitted to notice the error and even failed to avail the corrective mechanism offered. In the instant case, we cannot turn a Nelson’s eye to the ground realities that existed," the bench said.

The appellant hailed from a small village named Dheodha in Bihar. He belonged to the downtrodden segment of the society, the bench noted.

"We do not think that the appellant could be penalised for this insignificant error which made no difference to the ultimate result. Errors of this kind, as noticed in the present case, which are inadvertent do not constitute misrepresentation or wilful suppression," the bench said.

The court said it is not impressed with the argument of the State that the error was so grave as to constitute wrong or misleading information.

"We say on the peculiar facts and circumstances of this case. Even the State has not chosen to resort to any criminal action, clearly implying that even they did not consider this error as having fallen foul of the clause in the advertisement," the bench said.

Exercising its power under Article 142 of the Constitution, the court directed that, in the event of there being no vacancy, appointment letter will still have to be issued on the special facts of this case.