High Court upholds Govt’s decision on 2015 notification withdrawal

Srinagar, Jul 8: The High Court of J&K and Ladakh has upheld the government’s decision to withdraw a notification it had issued in 2015 to fill up Class IV vacancies in the School Education Department in central Kashmir’s Budgam district.

A division bench of Justice Sanjeev Kumar and Justice Sanjay Parihar upheld the government’s decision while setting aside the Central Administrative Tribunal’s judgement of August 17, 2023.

The bench observed that the decision to rescind the selection process was bona fide and aimed at ensuring a fair and legally tenable selection process.

The Chief Education Officer, Budgam vide notification dated February 5, 2014, had invited applications to fill up Class IV vacancies in the School Education Department in the district Budgam.

As per the eligibility criteria, a minimum qualification of 10th pass and a maximum of 10+2 was provided, and no additional weightage was to be given to any candidate for higher qualification in terms of SRO 99 of 2008.

However, it came to the notice of the government that the selection committee did not conduct the selection process in keeping with the advertisement notification and altered the criteria.

On the basis of a report of an inquiry committee set up in this regard, the government withdrew the entire selection process.

The candidates who had found a place in the select list approached the High Court with several writ petitions, which were later transferred to the CAT.

The court bench noted that from the reading of the report of the enquiry committee pointing out various irregularities in the selection process, it was abundantly clear that it was not a case where the authorities could have separated the tainted candidates from the untainted ones.

“The irregularities and illegalities committed by the selection committee by altering the selection criteria and raising the points for interview from 20 percent to 40 percent that too for Class IV recruitment, goes to the root of the selection process,” it said and held that any selection process made based on such selection criteria was stillborn and could not sustain in law.

The court observed that without going into the legal question as to whether the selection criteria, once notified, could be changed midway without prejudice to the candidates aggrieved.

“In the instant case, there was sufficient material with the petitioners (authorities) to arrive at a satisfaction that the selection process conducted was neither fair nor transparent,” the court said.

In its decision, the court said that the authorities are free to initiate a fresh selection process for making the selection for Class IV and MTS vacancies.

However, the court made it clear that in case a fresh selection process is undertaken by the authorities by inviting applications, the candidates who had participated in the selection process scrapped and who were within the age limit would not be treated as over-aged for the fresh selection process.