Jammu and Kashmir High Court: The Bench of Ramalingam Sudhakar, J., allowed the appeal against an order of the Deputy Commissioner on the ground that the order was a non-speaking order and was passed without application of mind to the rival claims.
The facts of the case were that the petitioner in SWP No.1118/2015 (Petition 1) was the selected candidate in the newly created Anganwari Centre. She was aggrieved by the order of the Deputy Commissioner stating that the petitioner in SWP No.1418/2015 (Petition 2) seemed to be right claimant for the post of Anganwari Worker instead of the petitioner in Petition 1. Thus selection of the said candidate was quashed and it was directed to initiate fresh selection process action report. Petitioner 2 was aggrieved by the direction issued by the Deputy Commissioner to initiate fresh selection process after setting aside the selection of Petitioner 1. According to her, if the selection is set aside, the selection process would be continued with the next available candidate and that was her grievance. The grievance of Petitioner 1, was that she was not heard and no opportunity was given to her to participate in the process of hearing of the appeal filed by Petitioner 2 and the impugned order did not give any reason as to the claim of the Petitioner 1 and in contrast with that of the claim of Petitioner 2 therefore, it was a non-speaking order and without application of mind purely based on a report of the Child Development Project Officer, ICDS Project.
The Court accepted the plea of Petitioner 1 and ordered that the impugned order should be set aside and the appeal should be considered since the Deputy Commissioner had erred in passing a non-speaking order, without application of mind to the rival claims. [Nisha Rana v. State, 2018 SCC OnLine J&K 1049, Order dated 26-02-2018]