Probes, controversies and politics in the selections
CHANDIGARH: Over 9,200 candidates on Sunday got a fresh chance to be employed as physical training instructors (PTIs) in Haryana, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling.
The controversial selections of 1, 983 PTIs by the Haryana Staff Selection Commission (HSSC) in 2010 during the Congress rule were set aside by the apex court on April 8, paving the way for a fresh recruitment process. The first step towards this was the written exam on Sunday.
According to the apex court, selections will now be made from among the candidates applying for the posts of PTI in 2006, including those who were hired.
PLAYING POLITICS
The 2010 selections, the process for which began in 2006, remained embroiled in protracted litigation for a decade. Politics came into play once the apex court upheld the decision of the Punjab and Haryana high court to set aside the selections of 1,983 PTIs because of discrepancies in the hiring process.
Politicians of various hues came out in support of the ousted PTIs, holding khap panchayat meetings, flouting social distancing norms and demanding enactment of a law to protect their jobs.
Former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda recently said that the Congress legislature party will bring a private member’s bill during the coming assembly session to facilitate the reinstatement of PTIs.
Independent MLAs like Balraj Kundu and Sombir Sangwan, both from the BJP stable, too have espoused the cause of the dismissed instructors.
The apex court had quoted a ruling of a Constitution bench to answer the plea that it is not equitable to throw out the PTIs after they had been employed for over nine years. “It is very unfortunate that these persons should be uprooted after they had been appointed, but if equality and equal protection before the law have any meaning and if our public institutions are to inspire that confidence which is expected of them, we would be failing in our duty if we did not, even at the cost of considerable inconvenience to government and the selected candidates, do the right thing,’’ the SC said.
CRIMINAL CASE AGAINST FORMER FORMER HSSC MEMBERS
The state government on the other hand has got a criminal case registered against former HSSC chairperson and members by the vigilance bureau in July for allegedly misusing their positions and tinkering with the selection criteria to help certain candidates get selected as PTIs.
The sections invoked in the FIR pertained to punishment for false evidence in a judicial proceeding, public servant disobeying law, forgery of court record or public register, forgery for the purpose of cheating and criminal misconduct by a public servant.
DIRECTIVES OF COURTS
The Supreme Court while upholding the HC decision had termed as “arbitrary” the Commission’s decision of June 30, 2008, to cancel the written examination, the July 11, 2008 decision to call candidates eight times the number of vacancies on minimum percentage of marks for interviews and the decision of July 31, 2008 to call all the eligible candidates for interviews.
Quoting the HC findings on pattern of marks allocated to some selected and non-selected candidates, the SC said the HC had observed that it cannot be a mere co-incidence that 90% of the meritorious candidates in academics performed so poorly in viva-voce that they could not secure even 10 marks out 30 or that the brilliance got configurated only in the average candidates possessing bare eligibility.