In one of its judgement delivered previous week, the Allahabad High Court had denied to lower the merit for selection in the Assistant Teacher Recruitment Examination-2018 and stated that merely because certain seats were vacant, the Court couldn't issue a writ of mandamus and ask the Government to adjust more candidates.

A one -judge bench of Judge Abdul Moin ruled out:

"A feeble argument raised on behalf of the petitioners is that there are approximately 27713 posts still lying vacant and it would be equitable for this Court to direct the respondents to fill in the remaining vacancies with the relaxed qualifying marks. However, it is settled proposition of law that no mandamus can be issued by the Courts of law to the Government to fill in unfilled vacancies and as such, even the said argument is rejected." 

The Court thus dismissed about 60 petitions.

The State Govt had then issued GO dated Jan 09, 2018, for conducting the exam to recruit Assistant Teachers.

It fixed the criteria as to 45% as qualifying marks for General and OBC Category and 40% for SC/ST candidates.

However, afterwards, the State Government issued another GO dated May 21, 2018, decreasing the min qualifying marks as 33 for General and OBC and 30 for SC/ST.

Then, later on, High Court intervened the matter while reviewing a writ petition, and thus following its order, the State Govt on Feb 20, 2019, cancelled the GO dated May 21, 2018, and started the process for examination by keeping in account the previous GO dated Jan 09, 2018.

Later in the thread, a bunch of petitions were filed before the High Court seeking enforcement of GO dated May 21, 2018.

It was submitted before the Court that approximately 27713 posts were lying vacant even after the declaration of results for the 2018 Examination, and as such, it would be equitable to direct the state to fill in the remaining vacancies with the relaxed qualifying marks. The plea of legitimate expectation was also asserted.

The Court thus discarded the arguement and observed relying upon Union of India v. Hindustan Development Corporation, (1993) 3 SCC 499:

"for a case to be made out on the principle of legitimate expectation, the legitimacy of expectation can be inferred only if it is founded on the sanction of law or custom or an established procedure. In the present case, this Court has held that issue of the Government order dated 21.05.2018 lowering the eligibility marks would run against the settled proposition of law…to reduce the eligibility marks after the game had begun neither there is an established procedure followed in regular and natural sequence of the Government lowering the marks after the game had begun."

The judgement was delivered by Judge Abdul Moin on 07-01-2019.

Read Judgement Here: 

http://elegalix.allahabadhighcourt.in/elegalix/WebShowJudgment.do

 

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