PRAYAGRAJ, Jan. 1 -- The Allahabad high court has held that the appointment of a candidate who deliberately enters higher marks in a recruitment application form to gain undue advantage in the selection process is fundamentally illegal. The court ruled that such candidates cannot seek the benefit of estoppel as the appointment is tainted from the very beginning.

Dismissing the writ petitions filed by Awadhesh Kumar Chaudhary and six other petitioners, Justice Manju Rani Chauhan said, "Such an act, by any stretch of reasoning, cannot be treated as a mere human error or an inadvertent mistake, as it confers an undue advantage upon the candidate to the prejudice of other eligible aspirants and strikes at the very root of fairness and transp...