HC reserves judgment on state govt’s appeal against stay order

LUCKNOW:The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court on Monday reserved its judgment on a special appeal filed by the state government and the education department challenging the stay on appointment of 69,000 assistant basic teachers. The court directed the respondents to file their objections and reply by Tuesday.

Justice Alok Mathur on June 3 had stayed the appointment process of 69,000 assistant teachers and fixed July 12 as the next date of hearing. The court’s order had stopped the counselling process, which was scheduled to start from June 3.

The state government has now filed an appeal against the stay.

A bench of justice Pankaj

Kumar Jaiswal and justice Dinesh Kumar Singh heard the state government’s appeal against the stay order.

Advocate general Raghvendra Singh appeared before the court on the state government’s behalf. Singh said the singlejudge bench had discussed the case by taking into consideration five questions as doubtful. But then also, the court referred entire answer sheet to the UGC for an expert opinion, Singh added.

The advocate general also pointed out that the single-judge bench’s decision would cause an unnecessary delay in the appointment of teachers.The examination was held in January last year.

“Looking into the magnitude and the scale of the examination and the number of persons whose future is at stake, I deem it appropriate to refer the provisional answer key, along with the objections, to experts to be appointed by the secretary, University Grants Commission, New Delhi,” the single-judge bench had observed on June 3.

Senior advocates LP Mishra, HGS Parihar and others had represented the various petitioners. They requested the court to file their objections, which the court permitted.