The Supreme Court pointed to the digital divide in India while using its extraordinary constitutional powers to revive a young man’s dream to join the police force.
Vashist Narayan Kumar, the youth in question, had missed the error in his date of birth made by an internet cafe operator who had helped him fill up his online application form for a police constable job in Bihar.
The State government cancelled his application because the form showed his birth date as December 8, 1997. However, the school certificate said it was December 18, 1997. The missing digit at the beginning of the birth date cost Mr. Kumar his chance to fulfill his ambition and made him run the round of courts for five long years.
A Supreme Court Bench of Justices J.K. Maheshwari and K.V. Viswanathan, however, refused to let the State get the better of Mr. Kumar because of a “trivial error” in his application form.
Justice Viswanathan, using the court’s unique powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to do complete justice, directed the Bihar government to issue Mr. Kumar his appointment letter.
“The State was not justified in making a mountain out of this molehill. Perhaps the rarefied atmosphere of the cybercafe got the better of the appellant (Kumar). 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… Though technology is a great enabler, there is at the same time, a digital divide,” Justice Viswanathan gave voice to the court’s empathy in a 14-page judgment recently.
The court drew attention to the socio-economic background of Mr. Kumar.
“He hails from a small village named Dheodha in Bihar. He belongs to the downtrodden segment of the society. He aspired to become a police constable… After noticing the advertisement issued by the Central Selection Board on July 29, 2017, he went to the cyber cafe at Pakribarawan, a nearby town, from his remote village… With the assistance of a person running the cyber café, he filled in his form and uploaded it online,” Justice Viswanathan narrated.
He said the young man had otherwise cleared all the stages of the selection process. The judge noted the fact that Mr. Kumar was left “distraught” that he had failed due to an inadvertent error. The judgment referred to the young man’s “simple and straight-forward” explanation that he had overlooked the typo. He had never tried to mislead.
“The date of birth got recorded as ‘08.12.1997’ instead of ‘18.12.1997’. He had derived no benefit from it as either way he fulfilled the eligibility criteria and the age requirement,” Justice Viswanathan noted.
The error was not so grave as to constitute wrong or misleading information. Even the State had not chosen to resort to any criminal action, the judgment observed.
“After a candidate has participated in the selection process and cleared all the stages successfully, his candidature can only be cancelled after careful scrutiny of the gravity of the lapse, and not for trivial omissions or errors,” Justice Viswanathan held, referring to settled judicial precedents of the court.
