PIL challenges validity of Ordinance on faculty posts

A PIL was filed on Friday in Supreme Court challenging validity of an Ordinance passed a day before to restore University-wise reservation in appointment of teachers in central institutions and varsities.

The decision was taken to overturn the Allahabad High Court's 2017 judgment, for subject-wise or department-wise reservation. The top had upheld the HC's judgement on January 23 and dismissed review petitions filed by the Union government and the UGC on February 27 as well as of the affected candidates.

“A rare move was adopted by the central government, to get the political mileage and under pressure from alliance partners. The decision was taken after being worried over the prospects of antagonizing huge vote bank ahead of next Lok Sabha elections,” the petition filed by Prathvi Raj Chauhan and Priya Sharma stated.

The petitioners sought a direction to stay and finally strike down 'The Central Education Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Ordinance 2019' promulgated by the President, as ultra vires to the Article 14 (equality), 16 (equality in of opportunity in public employment) and 21 (life and liberty) of the Constitution.

“It is an undisputed fact that if the subject wise recruitment is adopted in each service or post in each cadre in each faculty, discipline, specialty or super-specialty, it would not only be clear to the candidates who seek recruitment but also there would not be an over-lapping in application of the rule of reservation to the service or posts,” their plea claimed.

The petitioners contended clubbing of seats across departments and considering college/institution as one unit would be completely unworkable and impractical, as teachers in different departments “are neither transferable nor they are in competition with each other”.

Claiming the Ordinance was promulgated with “the malicious intention” without putting the decision before Parliament for discussion, the petitioners said if university was taken as the unit it would result in some department having all the reservation and some department having only unreserved candidates.