Twelve years after his selection was cancelled, a constable gets the job back with seniority but no arrears
Justice K. Sreenivasa Reddy set aside the cancellation of a police constable's selection, holding non-disclosure of a criminal case cannot be met with a rigid formula.
A candidate provisionally selected as a police constable had his selection cancelled by a memorandum of January 2014 over a criminal case he had not disclosed. On 25 September 2026 the Andhra Pradesh High Court set that memorandum aside and directed that he be appointed to the post. The reasoning rests on a line of Supreme Court authority that has moved steadily away from treating non-disclosure as a single offence with a single answer, and towards asking what the candidate actually did, what came of the case, and how he has behaved since.
The selection and its cancellation
The petitioner took part in a recruitment process under a notification of 31 October 2011 and was provisionally selected for the post of Police Constable, SCT PC (Civil). The cancellation followed by a memorandum issued on 10 January 2014. His challenge came to the High Court as a transferred matter from the Administrative Tribunal, was reserved on 23 July 2026 and pronounced on 25 September 2026.
The authorities the Court worked from
The judgment is built on a sequence of decisions rather than one. Avtar Singh v. Union of India supplies the framework for suppression and false information in employment. Commissioner of Police v. Sandeep Kumar supplies the humane limb of it: young people should not be made to carry an indelible stigma for the rest of their lives, particularly where the underlying offence is not of a serious nature. The Court was careful about what that principle does and does not say. It does not make disclosure of criminal antecedents unnecessary. It requires the nature and gravity of the underlying conduct to be assessed before a consequence as serious as denial of public employment is imposed.
From Ravindra Kumar v. State of U.P. the Court took the proposition that a case of non-disclosure cannot be dealt with by applying a rigid, one-size-fits-all formula. The facts and circumstances of each case need individual consideration: the nature of the offence, the circumstances in which the candidate came to be involved in it, the result of the criminal case, and the overall conduct of the candidate are all relevant to what the non-disclosure should cost him.
Nor is this confined to civilian posts. The Court pointed to two Division Bench decisions of its own, in the police recruitment context, which recognised the need to consider the triviality or seriousness of the offence, the circumstances of the criminal case, the acquittal, and the candidate's antecedents and conduct, before sustaining a cancellation of selection.
Why the memorandum could not stand
Measured against that body of law, the impugned memorandum did not survive. The Court held it unsustainable and the petitioner entitled to the relief sought — the point being not that the non-disclosure was immaterial, but that the consequence had been applied without the individual assessment the authorities were required to make.
Order
The writ petition was allowed and the memorandum of 10 January 2014 set aside. The respondents were directed to appoint the petitioner to the post of Police Constable, SCT PC (Civil), for which he was provisionally selected pursuant to his participation in the selection process under the notification of 31 October 2011. He is entitled to all notional benefits, including pay, seniority and other consequential benefits, but is not entitled to arrears of salary. There was no order as to costs, and pending interlocutory applications stand closed.