HC upholds dismissal of duo who got govt jobs using fake sports certificates

The Bombay High Court has upheld the dismissal of two state government employees who used fake certificates to secure jobs through the sports quota.

The Bombay high court has upheld the dismissal of two state government employees who had secured jobs from 5% sports quota by using bogus certificates.

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A division bench of justice Nitin Jamdar and justice Manjusha Deshpande found no substance in arguments made by Shrikrishna Kharat, who was a clerk-typist with the general administration department at Mantralaya, and Ramdas Jaybhay, who was working as a government railway police constable in the office of the deputy commissioner of railway police, Mumbai.

In 2021, deputy director of sports and youth services, Aurangabad, cancelled their sports certificates, which purportedly showed them having excelled in state-level trampoline tournaments, after he found them fake. Their appeals were rejected by the joint director last year and subsequently by the commissioner, sports and youth services.

Challenging the commissioner’s order, the duo approached Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal (MAT) which on June 9, 2022, dismissed their pleas. Before MAT they argued that the cancellation of their certificates was in breach of principles of natural justice, as they were not given an opportunity of hearing.

While Jaybhay was dismissed from service on May 7, 2022, Kharat was sacked from job on July 4 that year. The duo moved the high court on June 29 last year.

On October 30, 2023, the high court upheld both the orders – cancellations of their sports certificates and their dismissal from service. The bench issued an order on grounds that they had been issued notices and called upon to submit original documents based on which the sports certificates had been issued, but they did not attend the hearings.

The bench said the certificates issued to the petitioners were examined individually and found to be bogus – part of a larger scam that came to light in 2020 when Maharashtra Public Service Commission officials came across a bogus certificate issued to a candidate in free trampoline while conducting an examination at Kolhapur and reported the matter to the commissioner, sports and youth services.

The commissioner in June 2020 ordered an inquiry that revealed that a deputy director of sports and youth Services, Aurangabad, had issued at least 258 fake certificates for trampoline over a period of time, and thereafter criminal proceedings were initiated against the deputy director concerned.

In this backdrop, the bench said the petitioners’ conduct in securing fake sports certificates and entering the government services deprived genuine sportspersons of government jobs. “This needs to be deprecated, and no indulgence needs to be shown,” the bench said and dismissed their petitions.

The high court also rejected the petitioners’ contention that their termination without holding a departmental enquiry was bad in law and the cancellation of their sports certificates alone could not be grounds and could not automatically result in dismissal.

In this regard, the bench said the challenge to their dismissal for want of disciplinary proceedings was a separate cause of action and as MAT was the court of first instance in service matters for state government employees, they should challenge their dismissal before the tribunal. The court has therefore kept the issue of their dismissal open for consideration by the tribunal if they approach MAT again.