The Karnataka High Court has directed authorities to reconsider the candidature of motor vehicle inspector applicants rejected over a requirement for experience repairing heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) and heavy passenger vehicles (HPVs) with petrol engines, a vehicle category the state acknowledged no longer exists in India.
A division bench of Justices R Devdas and K Manmadha Rao quashed the Karnataka State Administrative Tribunal’s March 31, 2026 order rejecting petitions filed by the candidates. The court said that if the applicants’ names appear in the revised final select list dated October 26, 2023, the commissioner of the transport department must issue them appointment orders with all associated benefits.
The recruitment requirement prescribed one year of experience in a reputed automobile workshop handling repairs of light motor vehicles, HGVs and HPVs fitted with both petrol and diesel engines. The dispute centred on how candidates’ experience certificates were assessed by the Karnataka Public Service Commission and the transport department.
The petitioners argued that certificates issued by the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation, Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation and other state-owned bodies claimed experience in repairing petrol-powered HGVs and HPVs, even though such vehicles have not existed in India for several decades. They contended that certificates from private entities that did not mention experience with those vehicles were, in contrast, rejected or treated as inadequate.
The bench noted that the recruitment condition was ambiguous and recorded that the state government had conceded there were no HGVs or HPVs with petrol engines. The court described the acceptance of certificates containing such claims from state-owned transport corporations as unreasonable, given that those corporations did not maintain or repair such vehicles.
The court also referred to the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways deleting the disputed provision after identifying the anomaly. It said the transport commissioner could not reject a selected candidate or withhold an appointment order solely because the candidate lacked experience with petrol-powered HGVs or HPVs.
The ruling places responsibility on the transport department to revisit the affected cases against the revised selection list rather than applying a technically impossible experience standard. It also highlights how outdated technical language in recruitment rules can influence access to public-sector posts and produce unequal outcomes for candidates whose certificates accurately reflect the vehicles handled in actual workshops.
