Punjab and Haryana HC quashes Haryana govt policy of granting extra marks under socio-economic criteria to job aspirants
The Punjab and Haryana High Court recently held as unconstitutional the socioeconomic criteria framed by the Haryana government to grant additional marks to certain classes of candidates in state government jobs.
The court observed that the criteria is violative of Articles 14, 15 and 16 of the Constitution. The criteria states that candidates without any family member with a govt job would get 5 marks, whose father is not alive and some other parameters get a maximum of 20 marks under the policy.Notably, such additional marks were only for Haryana domicile candidates but later Haryana extended benefit of this criteria to candidates from other states as well.
A division bench of Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma and Justice Sudeepti Sharma pronounced these orders while allowing a bunch of petitions. The bench further ordered the state to prepare a fresh merit list solely on the basis of the marks obtained in the common eligibility test (CET) for Group-C and D posts.The judgment was pronounced in open court but was not released till the filing of this copy.
Relying on the Supreme Court judgment passed in the case, Indra Sawhney and M Nagaraj versus Union of India, some of the petitioners also contended that it has been held by the Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court that the state cannot obliterate requirement of ceiling limit of 50 per cent reservation in jobs. In the aforesaid matter, the apex court had held that if the ceiling limit of 50 per cent was breached, the structure of quality and equality in Article 16 of the Constitution would collapse.
Meanwhile, the Haryana government contended that cases relied upon by petitioners pertain to reservation, whereas the state has given a concession of additional marks to those persons, who are entitled to the same under the socio-economic criteria.
Many petitioners in this matter submitted that candidates appearing for the state government jobs under general category have been severely placed at a disadvantage on account of reservation notified by Haryana under social economic criteria.
The apex court has laid down that any reservation in public employment cannot cross 50 percent and the general category should get at least 50 percent share in the advertised posts but in Haryana because of this policy, general category aspirants had least chance of getting even a 10 percent share in the advertised posts.
from India Legal https://ift.tt/9KoNQus