Rakib Altaf
SRINAGAR, Oct 10: The allegations of favoritism against Jammu and Kashmir’s service selection board in recruitment process have been proven right after a detailed judgment of high court lambasted the body for ‘diversion of merit’ while selecting recruits.
In a September 20 judgment that was issued last week, the high court has criticised the body for “sidelining merit and resorting to favouritism” while recruiting assistant information officers in divisional and state cadres, which were advertised in 2006 and subsequently in 2008 and 2010.
Justice Hasnan Masoodi has quashed the lists of candidates selected for the posts.
Now, the high court has ordered the selection board to proceed with a fresh recruitment process, which, it said, should be “strictly in accordance with the rules”.
“The only irresistible conclusion to be drawn is that the selection process is vitiated…the board has changed the selection process in the middle… on the day of aptitude test and interview on 19.10.2011… (which was) to the prejudice of the petitioners and resulted in the
disadvantage of the petitioners (SIC),” the court noted in view of a petition filed by two candidates.
The petitioners had claimed that the SSB had modified the selection criteria in such a way that the qualifying examination and other parameters, such as a higher education degree, failed to decide who would proceed for the final interview test.
The final criterion for selection rested in the interview, which was conducted by the board’s selection committee comprising Farooq Ahmed Peer and Basharat Saleem, both members of the SSB, besides a third official of the state information department.
The high court went on to say that the method adopted by the board left “big gaps” in the selection process and allowed for “arbitrariness to sneak in and make selection on grounds other than merit”. “The marks set apart for interview though only 20% were in effect 50% of the total marks, leaving room for arbitrariness….The weightage and role given to the interview because of change in selection criteria gave a much larger role to the interview committee to make selection irrespective of merit,” the judgement reads.
The court judgment also said that the SSB violated recruitment rules by not restricting the number of candidates for the final interview to one-fifth of the total number of applicants and did not “shortlist the candidates, gave no weightage to merit in qualifying examination on pro rata basis … and no weightage to higher qualification.”
“The board has instead allowed all the candidates irrespective of their merit and the number of available vacancies to appear in the aptitude test and interview,” the judgment says.
The SSB also modified its advertisements for the post of assistant information officer thrice since 2006. In 2008, it issued a fresh notification for the same post albeit in two grades — 1 and 2. The advertisement was further modified in 2011 to include 13 posts of assistant information officers in the state cadre.
The SSB has now been directed by the court to redo the whole process of selection. However, officials were not available for comment despite repeated attempts.
(The author is trainee, Hindustan Times)
