The first bench comprising Chief Justice AP Sahi and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy made the observation while dismissing a plea which challenged the rejection of his application citing lack of PSTM certificate and permit him to participate in the selection process for the post of Civil Judge called by TNPSC.

As per the case, the petitioner C Gopalakrishnan had obtained a law degree from Coimbatore Law College, which does not have any sanctioned course in law teaching in Tamil and the medium of instruction is in English. But since he attempted his answers in the examination of law in Tamil, he had indicated in the application form that his medium of instruction was Tamil. But on rejection of his application for failing to produce the PSTM certificate, he moved the court claiming that he never intended to claim any such benefit and against the column claiming benefit under PSTM category or not, he had marked ‘NO’. But when the copy of the application was downloaded the said query and answer was absent and hence TNPSC should not have rejected his application, he claimed.

However, the first bench on finding that the application did not have any query or column with regard to claiming benefits of PSTM category and that the petitioner had also signed the declaration form agreeing to the rejection of his application if he failed to produce the PSTM certificate, said, “Having written the University Examinations or Competitive Examinations in Tamil language alone will not qualify the candidate for claiming this reservation.”

The bench also set aside the petitioner’s contention that he had marked Tamil medium since he had attempted his answers in Tamil on citing the instructions in the GO which allows the said reservation only to those who have studied the prescribed qualifying course in Tamil medium.