Crystallising a guideline on public appointments, a Bench comprising Justices Tarun Chatterjee and P Sathasivam minced no words while laying down a formula to root out the malaise of 'back door' entry into government jobs.

"Those who come by the back door should go through that door," was the terse remark of Justice Sathasivam, who wrote the judgment on behalf of the Bench. The question before the court was the validity of appointment of 60 clerks-cum-typists in the Madhya Pradesh State Cooperative Bank Ltd in 1995, allegedly without following the selection criteria.

Though it upheld their recruitment after scrutiny of documents, the Bench said any appointment to a government post, made without advertising it or inviting applications from general public, would amount to violation of right to equality guaranteed under the Constitution. The Bench advised courts not to exercise its jurisdiction on misplaced sympathy for those who were dismissed from service on being found to have been appointed through the back door.

It said courts could even resort to wholesale cancellation of a recruitment drive if the mischief was so widespread that it was difficult to pick out persons who had unlawfully benefited. "When the entire selection is stinking, conceived in fraud and delivered in deceit, individual innocence has no place and the entire selection has to be set aside," the Bench said.