'Fraud vitiates everything' — Examine this doctrine with reference to cases of fake caste/tribe certificates being used to secure public employment.

"Fraud vitiates everything" means a right built on a false foundation never legally arises. Applied to fake caste or tribe certificates, it converts even a decades-long public appointment into a nullity — reaffirmed by the Madras High Court in September 2026, which held that protecting benefits secured on a false claim is a fraud on the Constitution [1].

How the doctrine operates in service law

• Void entry, not merely a voidable benefit: one never eligible for a reserved post acquires no right to its terminal benefits. The Court denied full pension, gratuity and leave salary to a Chennai Port Trust retiree who served 1982–2013 on a false Urali (ST) claim, his actual community being Urali Gounder [1].
• No immunity from lapse of time: verification survives superannuation; a certificate issued decades earlier remains cancellable [1].
• Institutional machinery: Kumari Madhuri Patil (1994) created the Scrutiny Committee–Vigilance Cell mechanism, resting proof on pre-appointment school and revenue records rather than the certificate itself [2].
• Narrow judicial review: under Article 226, courts do not re-appreciate a Scrutiny Committee's factual findings absent mala fides or jurisdictional error [3].

Why such fraud is constitutionally grave

• Reservation under Articles 15(4), 16(4) and 342 is compensatory; a false claimant displaces a genuinely disadvantaged tribal aspirant.
• The scarcity is real — backlog ST reserved vacancies in major central ministries have run into thousands, cleared only through DoPT's Special Recruitment Drives [4].

Where the doctrine underdelivers

• It is punitive, not restitutory: the displaced ST candidate is never traced, and the freed post does not automatically return to the ST quota.
• Enforcement drift: the certificate was found fake in 1984, yet litigation closed only in 2026, with no statutory deadline binding verification [1].

The doctrine is therefore sound in principle but incomplete in effect. Appointments against reserved posts should remain provisional until certificate validation, scrutiny should be time-bound as Madhuri Patil envisaged [2], and posts freed by cancellation should be restored to ST candidates through Special Recruitment Drives [4] — ensuring fraud is not merely punished but constitutional equality actually restored.