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Informist, Thursday, Jun. 4, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – The Delhi High Court Thursday held that mere knowledge of written test scores, annual performance assessment reports, and seniority marks of candidates to an interview panel does not lead to the inference that the results were manipulated to favour pre-identified candidates. Candidates have to provide cogent evidence if they allege manipulation of results by the interview committee, the court said while rejecting a petition filed by employees of the government-owned United India Insurance Co. Ltd.

 

The employees had challenged the company's promotion policy for officers. The court said the petitioners had made serious allegations of corruption in the promotion process but failed to place any material on record to substantiate them.

 

A bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia said the petitioners had neither challenged the allocation of marks nor demonstrated that the interview component carries such disproportionate weight as to enable arbitrary selection solely because the interview committee is aware of the marks secured by candidates in earlier stages of the selection process. The petitioners also failed to demonstrate any statutory bar on the interview committee acting as the promotion committee upon conclusion of the interview process, the bench said.

 

United India Insurance was entitled to relax, as a welfare measure, the criteria for promotion in favour of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates, the court said. The voluntary relaxation of eligibility criteria by up to 10% for such candidates cannot be said to be contrary to law and is in consonance with Article 335 of the Constitution, it said. Further, the insurance company is likewise not precluded from providing Other Backward Classes candidates with pre-promotion training, it said. The challenge to such training is also devoid of merit, as the petitioners had failed to show any statutory prohibition against the same, it added.

 

The petitioners had alleged that they were being victimised for not cooperating with the corrupt practices of senior officials of the company and were being denied promotions as a result. They had said the company's promotion policy was designed to promote and protect corrupt and inefficient officers and curtail the promotion of honest candidates. The policy was created to enable promotion of pre-identified candidates and discriminate against the petitioners and other officials, they had claimed.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Rajeev Pai

 

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