Supreme Court quashes over 1000 assistant professor appointments in 2 Punjab universities

NEW DELHI: In a major setback to over 1,000 assistant professors appointed in 2021 in Panjab University and Guru Nanak Dev University, the Supreme Court on Monday quashed their recruitment, observing that it was done in violation of UGC regulations.Recruitment was done for 1,091 posts of assistant professor and 67 posts of librarian. The court said it is a settled principle that when the law prescribes a thing to be done in a particular manner, then it should be done in that manner alone."In the present case, there are multiple deficiencies. Giving away of a rigorous criteria laid down in UGC regulations with a single, multiple-choice question based written test, and the complete elimination of the viva-voce, all establish the arbitrary nature of the exercise which cannot pass the test of reasonableness laid down under Article 14 of the Constitution," a bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and K Vinod Chandran said."Hence, the single judge (of Punjab and Haryana HC) had rightly struck down the entire selection process, and the division bench of HC erred in interfering with that conclusion," it said. SC accepted the plea of senior advocates Raju Ramchandran and Nidhesh Gupta who alleged that the recruitment process was illegal and needed to be set aside.The court noted that the recruitment process was changed without any reason and it was decided by govt that selection would be done only on the basis of a written exam. "State is entitled to change its policy, yet a sudden change without valid reasons will always be seen with suspicion. Even in cases where there is no statutory prescription of any particular way of doing a thing, the executive must observe the long-standing practice," it said.