Rajasthan HC Dismisses Power Corporation Appointment Writ for Failure to Implead Appointees

A Division Bench at Jaipur dismissed a Special Appeal challenging an RRVUNL appointment, holding that candidates allegedly appointed with lesser merit were necessary parties who had to be impleaded before any relief could be granted.

The Rajasthan High Court's Division Bench, led by Acting Chief Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma and Justice Maneesh Sharma, dismissed a Special Appeal (Writ) filed by Om Prakash Shakywal, a candidate on the merit list of Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited (RRVUNL), who claimed that persons ranked below him were appointed while he was denied the chance to appear for document verification. The bench, sitting at Jaipur, declined to interfere on the ground that Shakywal had never impleaded the appointees as parties to the writ petition, making them necessary parties whose absence was fatal to the proceedings. The order, dated 1 July 2026, affirmed the dismissal of the underlying writ petition, though it expressly rejected the Single Judge's reasoning that the petition had become infructuous on account of time.

Petitioner's Claim: Merit List Placement, Missed Verification

Shakywal had filed S.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 9530/2013 contending that he was placed on the RRVUNL merit list but was not informed of the date fixed for document verification. He stated that internet facility was unavailable in his native village, Bambulia Kalan, Tehsil Anta, District Baran, and that he therefore could not appear for verification. Candidates ranked below him in merit were subsequently appointed to the posts.

Before the Division Bench in the Special Appeal, his counsel argued that the writ petition could not be dismissed solely because subsequent selection processes had been conducted and more than six months had elapsed. The legal position on the date of filing, he submitted, was what had to be examined.

Respondents' Position: Verification Date Communicated by E-mail and SMS

RRVUNL, through its Chairman-cum-Managing Director and Joint Director (Personnel and Administration), filed a reply stating that the date of document verification had been communicated to candidates through both e-mail and mobile message (SMS). Shakywal did not appear despite this communication, and appointments were accordingly given to other candidates.

The bench recorded that Shakywal's counsel did not file a rejoinder or counter-affidavit disputing this specific averment. The allegation that candidates were not informed of the verification date therefore stood uncontroverted on the record.

Division Bench Parts Ways with Single Judge's Otiose-Petition Reasoning

The learned Single Judge had dismissed the writ petition on the basis of the ratio in Om Prakash Ghiya's case, holding that the waiting or reserved list lapses after six months and that a fresh selection process had been initiated. The Division Bench explicitly disagreed with that approach.

The bench held that the pendency of a writ petition for several years, or the initiation of subsequent selection rounds, cannot by itself be a ground for dismissal. It invoked the maxim Actus Curiae Neminem Gravabit—that no court shall cause a litigant to suffer on account of its own delay in deciding cases. A writ petition, in the bench's view, falls to be assessed on the legal position prevailing at the date it was filed, not on what transpired thereafter.

This part of the reasoning operates in Shakywal's favour, but it did not change the outcome because the bench found a separate and independent defect in the petition.

Non-Joinder of Appointees: The Decisive Finding

The bench turned to what it described as a careful independent examination of the writ petition's contents. Shakywal was seeking to challenge the appointments given to candidates he alleged had lesser merit. Yet none of those candidates had been made a party to the proceedings. The bench found this omission to be fatal.

Relying on the Supreme Court's decision in Prabodh Verma & Ors. v. State of U.P. & Ors. (1984) 4 SCC 251 and subsequent judgments, the bench reproduced the relevant conclusion from paragraph 50 of that decision:

“A High Court ought not to hear and dispose of a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution without the persons who would be vitally affected by its judgment being before it as respondents”

The Supreme Court in Prabodh Verma had further directed that where petitioners refuse to join such persons, the High Court ought to dismiss the petition for non-joinder of necessary parties. The Rajasthan bench applied this directly: any candidate alleged to have been appointed with lesser merit would be vitally affected by a judgment in Shakywal's favour, and such a candidate was therefore a necessary party to the proceeding.

Without impleading any such person, Shakywal could not be granted relief, regardless of the merits of the underlying claim about the selection process.

The bench also noted a procedural observation made at the interim stage: when the Single Judge had issued notice in the writ petition, the stay application had been dismissed on the ground that appointment after selection had already been made. Despite this early indication that appointees' interests were in play, Shakywal did not move to implead them at any subsequent stage of the proceedings.

Outcome

The Division Bench, having independently examined the writ petition and finding it devoid of merits on the ground of non-joinder, dismissed D.B. Special Appeal (Writ) No. 937/2025 on 1 July 2026. All pending applications in the matter were disposed of simultaneously. The dismissal was on the basis of necessary-party non-joinder, not on the otiose-petition reasoning adopted by the Single Judge, which the Division Bench specifically declined to endorse.