Supreme Court holds medical ineligibility in police recruitment goes to the root and appointment cannot survive by parity or lapse.
Case Name: State of Uttar Pradesh and Ors. v. Ajay Kumar Malik
Citation: 2026 INSC 394
Date of Judgment/Order: 20 April 2026
Bench: Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah and Justice N. V. Anjaria
Held: The Supr eme Court held that medical fitness is a foundational eligibility condition for appointment to a uniformed service such as Police Constable, and once it is established that a candidate was medically unfit on the relevant date, the appointment cannot be sustained. The Court held that a candidate who seeks reinstatement or parity with other appointees must disclose all material facts, including earlier medical disqualification, and failure to disclose such facts amounts to suppression of material information. The Court further held that there is no concept of negative equality in service law; therefore, an ineligible candidate cannot claim appointment merely because another similarly ineligible candidate may have been wrongly continued in service.
Summary: The respondent was selected as a Police Constable in the 2005 Uttar Pradesh police recruitment process, which later became the subject of large-scale complaints and litigation. Separately from the general recruitment irregularities, the respondent was medically re-examined and found unfit due to knock knee deformity, leading to cancellation of his appointment in 2007. After litigation concerning en masse cancellation of recruitment and provisional reinstatement of certain candidates, the respondent sought parity and was provisionally reinstated in 2013. The State later initiated disciplinary proceedings on the ground that he had secured reinstatement without properly disclosing his earlier medical disqualification and by presenting a misleading claim of parity. His services were terminated by the Superintendent of Police, and the appellate and revisional authorities upheld the termination. The Services Tribunal and the Allahabad High Court interfered, holding that concealment was not proved. The Supreme Court reversed those findings, holding that the respondent knew that his earlier appointment had been cancelled due to knock knee, yet sought reinstatement without disclosing that disqualifying fact, and that such suppression went to the root of his eligibility.
Decision: The Supreme Court allowed the appeals, set aside the judgments of the Allahabad High Court dated 18 September 2023 and 12 April 2024, as well as the judgment of the State Public Services Tribunal dated 11 February 2021, and restored the respondent’s termination from the post of Police Constable. To balance equities, the Court directed that amounts already paid to the respondent for the period during which he actually worked shall not be recovered, and any unpaid amount for actual service shall be paid within four weeks, failing which it shall carry interest at 6% per annum. The Court also directed reconsideration of the case of another similarly placed candidate, if still in service, on the touchstone of prescribed eligibility and medical fitness, and imposed INR 5,000 costs on the appellants for filing written submissions beyond the permitted page limit.