A vague eligibility clause is read for the candidate, not against him — and clarifying it was the employer's job, not the court's

Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Shree Chandrashekhar set aside a Division Bench ruling that three years' experience must be earned after the qualification, holding that the advertisement never said so and that the court had expanded the dispute beyond what was brought before it.

The advertisement said the Librarian's post required “Graduation with M.Lib having 3 years' experience”. It did not say what the three years had to be spent doing, or whether they had to come after the degree. Twelve years, a tribunal, two High Court benches and a review petition later, the Supreme Court has held that the silence works in the candidate's favour, not the employer's. On 5 October 2026 a Division Bench of Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and Justice Shree Chandrashekhar set aside the judgments of the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh and restored the direction that the appellant be offered the post — while declining to give him the back-seniority the tribunal had awarded.

838 posts, and one librarian

Advertisement Notice No. 01 of 2014, issued on 13 August 2014 by the Services Selection Board, invited applications for 838 State, Divisional and District cadre posts; about 282 State cadre posts were advertised in one annexure, and one of them was the post of Librarian.

The candidate selected in the open merit category did not turn up for document verification and gave an affidavit saying he was not interested in joining. The General Administration Department therefore asked the Board to recommend the appellant, who was first on the waiting list.

His credentials were not in dispute. He holds an M.LIS — a two-year integrated Master's programme in Library and Information Science — which began in March 2010 and was completed by November 2011, with final examinations in March 2012. He worked as Assistant Librarian at a college of education from 1 October 2011 to 30 September 2012, and then as Junior Professional Assistant in a departmental library under the University of Kashmir from 4 October 2012 to 15 November 2014. It was admitted that experience acquired in both those roles counted as the requisite experience under the notice.

What was disputed was the overlap. The year at the college of education ran while he was still pursuing the M.LIS. The General Administration Department appears initially to have accepted it; the University communicated the course timings to the Board, and the Division Bench later noted that students were not required to attend classes to complete the project and had only to submit a report to their supervisor. In February 2020 the Department again asked the Board to release the recommendation in his favour, and the recommendation was duly made. About seven months later, by a letter of 8 December 2020, the Department decided he could not be appointed.

A tribunal, then a reversal

He challenged that letter. The writ petition was transferred to the Central Administrative Tribunal at Srinagar, which accepted his case and directed that the post of Librarian be offered to him with all consequential service benefits — seniority and pay fixation from the date the last candidate was appointed.

The respondents appealed, relying principally on an opinion of the Advocate General that experience gained while pursuing the M.LIS could not be treated as the requisite experience under the 1979 recruitment rules. The Division Bench did not accept that argument. But it did not stop there either: it went on to examine whether the experience criterion had a direct nexus with the educational qualification, and held that it did — so that the requisite experience could be gained only after obtaining the qualification. Four decisions of the Supreme Court were cited for that proposition. The view was reiterated when his review petition was dismissed in December 2025.

The court did the employer's job

“In our opinion, the Division Bench undertook an exercise which normally should be conducted by the employer.” That is the hinge of the judgment, and the reasons for it are practical.

First, at no point had the respondents raised the issue that the experience obtained as Assistant Librarian was not the requisite experience envisaged by the advertisement. Second, the prescribed qualification “was in fact not clear, rather quite vague”: the notice did not specify that the three years' experience had to be as Librarian, or Library Assistant, or any similar post irrespective of nomenclature. Third — and this is the detail that exposes the reasoning below — the same advertisement also carried the post of Library Assistant, for which the qualification was Graduation with B.Lib. A candidate could therefore have gained qualifying experience while working on that post, where the prescribed degree is one the Division Bench's logic would not have required at all.

The respondents made no effort to clarify the ambiguity in the prescribed qualification. In that situation, the Court held, “any ambiguity or vagueness in the prescribed qualification should be construed to the benefit of the candidate who prima facie appears to possess the requisite qualifications”. The Division Bench clearly fell in error in expanding the scope of the dispute brought before it and in holding the appellant ineligible, whereas he was clearly entitled to seek appointment.

Appointment, but not from 2014

The decisions of 10 July 2025 and 27 December 2025 were set aside, and the Tribunal's decision affirmed to the extent that the respondents were directed to offer the post of Librarian to the appellant.

The relief stopped there. The Bench was inclined to interfere with the Tribunal's further direction that he be given all consequential service benefits like seniority and pay fixation from the date the last candidate was appointed pursuant to the 2014 notice. The appeals were allowed in those terms, with no order as to costs. He gets the post he applied for in 2014; he does not get the twelve years.