High Court for scrutiny first, interview later

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 11

In a significant order that will change the way candidates are called for interviews, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has favoured the process of scrutiny first and interview later.

Justice Rajiv Narain Raina has also directed the stalling of further interview process for selecting PGT (mathematics) and weeding out of all ineligible candidates, who have not qualified the HTET or disqualified otherwise, from the list of interviewees.

The development is significant as candidates twice the number of vacancies are called for interview in the selection process. Scrutiny for weeding out ineligible candidates before for the interview would mean calling a higher number of eligible candidates.

The directions came on a bunch of petitions against Haryana and other respondents by Satish Kumar Malik and other petitioners through Girish Agnihotri, Raj Kapoor Malik and other advocates.

Justice Raina was told that the Haryana Staff Selection Commission has consulted the Haryana Advocate-General on the court query “as to why the scrutiny process should not first be completed before applying the short-listing formula of calling candidates not exceeding twice the number of vacancies”.

Justice Raina added he was informed a consensus was reached during the parleys between the Advocate-General and the commission that a fair and transparent selection would necessarily involve scrutiny first and interviews later.

Justice Raina added scrutiny to weed out ineligible candidates not passing the HTET, or disqualified for other reasons, should be carried out before applying the formula for short-listing candidates “so that merit is confined among eligible candidates and not a mixture of eligible and ineligible candidates which method would have distorted the ratio”.

Before parting, Justice Raina directed the commission to determine the number of eligible candidates interviewed so far after stalling further interviews. The scrutiny committee would then weed out all ineligible candidates from the list.

“The eligible candidates who have already been interviewed will not be part of the further process of interviews. Their scores in the interview will stand for determination of the final merit in the selection process”.