The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a petition seeking a direction to fill up 595 vacant posts of Elementary Trained Teachers (ETTs) of Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes in Punjab from Other Backward Classes (OBC) candidates. Was. The court said it would be “totally unfair” to do so six years after the release of the selection list.
A bench of Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice JK Maheshwari upheld the order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court refusing to direct the state government to allow conversion of the posts reserved for SC/ST candidates to OBC category. Had done it.
The top court referred to the Punjab Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes (Reservation in Services) Act and said, “It is clear that de-reservation of any reserved vacant post which is to be filled by direct recruitment or promotion cannot be done by the appointing authority.” Is.”
While pronouncing the judgment, Justice Maheshwari said that if the posts remain vacant due to non-availability of eligible candidates of any reserved category, the appointing authority like Education Department can request the “Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes Welfare Department to cancel the said vacancies”. Huh.”
He said, “After registering satisfaction on such request, if necessary or expedient in the public interest, subject to the condition that the said vacancy be carried forward to a subsequent unreserved vacancy, an order may be passed by the said department.” ”
The bench observed that it cannot ignore that the merit list was prepared as per the job advertisement of 2015-16 and thereafter, swapping of 595 vacancies of SC/ST category has been sought.
“In our opinion, it would be totally unfair to issue such direction after 6 years of notifying the select list for filling up of incomplete vacancies of SC/ST category by the OBCs,” the Court said. The Court also pointed out that the incomplete posts of ETT have been re-advertised.
The High Court had taken suo motu cognizance of the issue when some students from the OBC category, who wanted to be admitted to the vacant posts of SC/ST category, protested by climbing the tower for not filling up the posts.