HC paves way for filling 1,439 posts of lecturer

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 14

More than a decade after the state government issued an advertisement for recruiting college lecturers in different subjects, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has paved way for filling 1,439 posts.

A Division Bench asserted that it was abundantly clear that the stay on filling the vacant posts of lecturer (college cadre) in Punjab was not ordered. “The state on its own had taken upon itself not fill the posts…,” the Bench of Justice Jaswant Singh and Justice Girish Agnihotri asserted.

The directions came on a petition filed by Kulvir Gojra and other petitioners against the state and other respondents. The case has its genesis in the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC) recruitment scam that surfaced more than 17 years back. The state, on May 16, 2003, issued a notification cancelling all selections made in 67 categories on the basis of interviews conducted during 2002, by the PPSC, resulting in the filing of writ petitions against the action.

The court in January, 2003, directed the PPSC not to hold interviews of the candidates who had appeared in a screening test held during the pendency of the writ petition for the posts of lecturer. About five years later, the state came out with an advertisement for filling fresh posts of lecturer in different subjects. But contempt petitions were filed by some candidates. The pleas were disposed of upon an undertaking given by the state that the petitioners would be adjusted against the available vacancies, if they were found to be successful upon disposal of the writ petition.

“There was no bar as such on filling of fresh vacancies, which fell vacant on account of passage of time due to promotions, retirement, resignations etc. or due to increase in sanctioned strength of the cadre,” the Bench observed.

The state counsel, during the course of hearing, told the Bench that the government inadvertently and on its own conveyed to the contempt court that it did not intend to go ahead with the recruitment process notified vide advertisement dated April 4, 2008. Following the statement, posts were not filled. Resultantly, 1,439 posts of college lecturer were lying vacant across the state.