Gurgaon: Punjab and Haryana high court has set aside the recruitment process for 613 posts of assistant professor in English, maintaining “the quality of higher education depends upon the quality of teachers appointed.”Months after Haryana Public Service Commission’s (HPSC) English assistant professor (college cadre) recruitment sparked controversy over an unusually low pass percentage, the HC — while setting aside the recruitment process — held that the state “diluted” mandatory University Grants Commission (UGC) norms while framing the selection criteria.The recruitment came under scrutiny after less than 10% of candidates cleared the subject knowledge test, leaving 462 posts vacant despite thousands of aspirants appearing for the examination. Several unsuccessful candidates, including PhD scholars and UGC-NET/JRF qualifiers, questioned the transparency of the evaluation system and demanded access to answer sheets.The court on Tuesday directed Haryana govt to restart the recruitment process in accordance with the UGC Regulations, 2018. The judgment is expected to have wider implications as similar recruitment processes for other subjects were also conducted under the same policy framework adopted by the state govt.Justice Tribhuvan Dahiya, while allowing the petitions, held that the UGC Regulations framed under the UGC Act are binding on all states and universities and cannot be selectively modified by state govts. “The UGC Regulations lay down minimum standards to ensure merit-based appointments,” the court said.The court clarified that while states are free to prescribe standards higher than those fixed by the UGC, they cannot lower or dilute the minimum benchmarks laid down under central regulations. “The perceived authority of the state to adopt UGC Regulations with modifications has no legal foundation,” the court observed, adding that the regulations are mandatory in nature and aimed at maintaining uniform standards in higher education across the country.The verdict came in a batch of petitions challenging an HPSC ad in 2024. The petitioners argued that the recruitment process violated the UGC Regulations, 2018, which prescribe that candidates should be shortlisted on the basis of academic scores and selected through interview by a duly constituted selection committee.However, HPSC adopted a three-stage selection process comprising a screening test, a subject knowledge test and an interview. Under the system framed by the commission, the subject knowledge test carried 87.5% weightage in the final merit, while the interview accounted for only 12.5%.The petitioners, many of whom cleared the screening test but failed to qualify in the subject knowledge examination, contended that the entire process was contrary to the central regulations governing appointments in higher education institutions. Around 2,000 candidates appeared for the descriptive subject knowledge test, but only 151 candidates managed to score the minimum qualifying marks of 35%, leaving most posts vacant.The court rejected Haryana’s stand that the state could frame its own recruitment criteria because the UGC Regulations were not mandatory unless the state received financial assistance from the commission. The state also argued that the recruitment process was already at an advanced stage and that results for several other subjects were already declared under the same selection pattern.During the hearing, the petitioners relied heavily on the Supreme Court judgment in the Mandeep Singh case related to recruitment in Punjab colleges, where the apex court ruled that once a state adopts UGC Regulations, it cannot bypass the prescribed recruitment procedure.The HC noted that Haryana issued a memorandum on Nov 11, 2022, introducing “modified” criteria for shortlisting and selection of assistant professors. The court found that the state replaced the UGC-prescribed academic assessment system with written examinations, thereby violating Regulations 4, 5 and 6 of the 2018 framework.Rejecting the argument that candidates who participated in the process could not later challenge it, the court said participation in a recruitment exercise does not prevent candidates from questioning an illegal procedure.With the ruling, the HC has quashed the Nov 2022 memorandum as well as advertisement no 48/2024.
