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 transparency in the selection process." The petitioners had applied for the posts of assistant teachers and were declared successful in the Assistant Teacher Recruitment Examination, 2019. Subsequently, they applied for appointment, were duly selected and allotted Kushinagar district. After certain objections were raised, the petitioners were asked to submit affidavits and, upon consideration, appointment orders were issued by the Basic Shiksha Adhikari (BSA). However, after serving for nearly five years, their services were terminated through orders dated May 9, 2025, issued by the secretary of the Uttar Pradesh Board of Basic Education, Prayagraj, and May 21, 2025, issued by the district basic education officer, Kushinagar. The termination was based on the ground that they had mentioned inflated marks in their application forms while applying for the posts. During the hearing, counsel for the petitioners argued that correct information had been furnished through affidavits and that there had been no complaint regarding their work during the five-year period. Therefore, it was contended that the punishment of termination was disproportionate and harsh. After examining the records, the court observed that while some petitioners had not inflated their marks but had mentioned them separately or in a different format, amounting to a bona fide mistake, others had clearly entered higher marks. Relying on several judgments of the Supreme Court, the high court held that entering higher marks cannot be treated as a mere human error but constitutes a deliberate act capable of altering merit positions in recruitment. Such undue advantage, the court said, vitiates the entire selection process, as fraud vitiates every solemn act. Accordingly, the court observed: "The candidates' act of furnishing inflated academic marks constitutes a material misrepresentation. Their subsequent appointment is, therefore, vitiated ab initio (from the very beginning). The opportunity given for rectification cannot absolve the candidates of intentional falsification. No estoppel can arise to protect an appointment that is fundamentally illegal. The very foundation of the appointment stands vitiated by misrepresentation." Addressing the argument that the appointments could not be cancelled at a later stage when no discrepancy was detected earlier, the court held: "Permitting estoppel in such circumstances would undermine the sanctity of meritocracy, distort the selection process, and result in the displacement of genuinely more meritorious candidates. The doctrine of estoppel cannot be invoked to perpetuate illegality or to defeat the legitimate expectations of eligible aspirants." Noting that only four out of the eleven petitioners had not deliberately entered higher marks, the court granted them relief and quashed their termination orders. However, it denied relief to the remaining petitioners who had deliberately inflated their marks. Accordingly, the high court, by its judgment dated December 16, dismissed their writ petitions....