A benefit secured by fraud is voidable and generates no enforceable equities, the Orissa high court has ruled, upholding public sector undertaking Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL)’s termination of a petrol pump dealership obtained through a forged graduation certificate.
Justice Sanjeeb K Panigrahi dismissed a writ petition of Prasanta Behera, who operated a BPCL retail outlet in Bhubaneswar for nearly a decade before his dealership was cancelled in May 2015 after Utkal University confirmed it had no record of the qualification he claimed during the application process.
“Where entry into a privileged position is obtained on the basis of a false certificate or fraudulent representation, the foundation of such status collapses,” the court said. It added that a person cannot take advantage of his own fraud.
Behera applied for the dealership in 2004 under a land-linked scheme, offering land owned by his mother on Bhubaneswar’s Lewis Road. The dealership was granted, and his mother executed a lease of the land in favour of BPCL.
Following a complaint in 2012, BPCL wrote to Utkal University to verify the provisional graduation certificate Behera had submitted. The university reported that no such name existed in its records. The BPCL issued a show-cause notice and terminated the dealership.
The court rejected Behera’s argument that even without the graduation qualification, his score under the applicable selection criteria would have met the minimum benchmark. It said that the submission of a forged document to secure a benefit was “itself a grave infraction” that struck at the integrity of the selection process, regardless of any calculation.
The court cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in the R Vishwanatha Pillai vs State of Kerala case and said an appointment or allotment secured by fraud is void from inception. It dismissed Behera’s contention that BPCL acted after an unreasonable delay, observing that when an action is founded on fraud, the question of delay in initiating proceedings becomes largely immaterial.
Behera challenged BPCL’s continuing possession of the outlet premises, arguing that the land lease executed and the dealership were inseparably linked, and that termination of one should dissolve the other.
The court rejected that argument, holding that the lease and the dealership were distinct legal instruments between different parties. It said Behera’s mother was the lessor and that he could not in his own right seek to terminate a subsisting lease to which he was not a party.
