The Supreme Court on Wednesday declared that the government has the power to fix minimum qualifying marks in a public recruitment even after the examination is held, if such an exercise is undertaken without any malice to recruit the best talents.
A bench of Justices U U Lalit and Mohan M Shantanagoudar upheld the Uttar Pradesh government's decision to fix cut-off marks of 60 to 65% for recruitment of primary school teachers after the examination was over.
"In our considered view, the government was well within its rights to fix such cut off," the bench said, adding such an exercise was not impermissible and was certainly consistent with the objectives under the Right to Education Act.
The top court dismissed a batch of appeals filed by Shiksha Mitras (para teachers) against the Allahabad High Court's decision upholding the government's order to fix higher cut off marks.
"If the government has the power to fix minimum qualifying marks ‘from time to time’, there is nothing in the Rules which can detract from the exercise of such power even after the examination is over, provided the exercise of such power is not actuated by any malice or ill will and is in furtherance of the object of finding the best available talent," the bench said.
The court gave the Uttar Pradesh a go ahead to fill up about 38,000 remaining vacancies of teachers, saying the facts on record indicated that even with the higher cut off the number of qualified candidates was more than twice the number of vacancies available.
It, however, said the Uttar Pradesh government should give one more opportunity to 'Shiksha Mitras' to compete in next selection process, giving it discretion to set out manner and modalities for it.
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