Adverse CIBIL report costs an employee his bank job; HC refuses to intervene

Chennai: Contending that a person with poor or no financial discipline cannot be trusted with public money, the Madras High Court has refused to interfere with the decision of the country’s largest lender, State Bank of India, in cancelling the appointment order issued for the post of Circle Based Officer (CBO) over his adverse CIBIL report.

Justice N Mala, in her judgement earlier this month, passed the order based on a petition filed by P Karthikeyan seeking to quash the decision of the SBI which revoked his appointment order after seeking an explanation on CIBIL report, which was based on his past records of belated repayment of loans.

Loans being rejected and people being harassed based on their CIBIL score has become a recurring affair in the past few years with opposition leaders demanding that it be done away with.

The respondent, SBI, argued that the CIBIL report clearly reflected Karthikeyan’s financial indiscipline and that the prescription of qualification for a post is a matter of recruitment policy and the state, as an employer, is entitled to prescribe qualifications as a condition of eligibility.

The petitioner argued that on the date of notification, the petitioner did not have dues or adverse report in repayment of loans and credit card as he had cleared all the loans and that he was not declared as defaulter by CIBIL report or by any other agency.

The judge said the only issue is whether the SBI is justified in cancelling the petitioner's appointment on the ground that the petitioner had poor CIBIL score and had poor history of loan repayments.

“In view of the foregoing discussions, I find no merits in the writ petition and hence, the same is liable to be dismissed. Accordingly, the writ petition is dismissed. No costs,” the judge wrote.

“…there must be efficiency in handling public money and obviously a person with poor/ or no financial discipline cannot be trusted with public money. Therefore this Court under Article 226 of Constitution of India will not consider the relevancy of the eligibility criteria prescribed by the respondents (SBI),” the judge added.

One more aspect that needs mention, the judge said, is that the bank took a prudent decision that the candidates with a history of default in repayment of loans and adverse CIBIL and other external agencies report were ineligible.

“The probable rationale behind the said criteria may be that in banking business, the employees deal with public money and therefore financial discipline needs to be strictly maintained,” she added.