BISWAJIT DEKA Vs. STATE OF ASSAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) BY way of this petition under article 226 of the Constitution of India, petitioner seeks quashing of selection and appointment of respondent No.9 as Assistant Professor of English in Anandaram Dhekial Phookan (ADP) College, Nagaon and for a direction to conduct fresh selection.

(2.) CASE of the petitioner is that he had a good academic track record. After obtaining M.A. degree in English from Gauhati University, petitioner completed his M.Phil course. He also successfully cleared the State Level Eligibility Test (SLET). For a couple of months, petitioner had worked as a part -time Lecturer (now redesignated as Assistant Professor) in English in the Arya Vidyapeeth College, Guwahati in the year 2009. According to the petitioner, he belongs to the Other Backward Classes (OBC) and has annexed a certificate to that effect to the writ petition.

(3.) FOLLOWING information gathered by the petitioner under the Right to Information Act, he could come to know that he had secured only 44.2 marks whereas respondent No.9 had secured 55.7. In so far marks allotted under the heading "knowledge of subject" is concerned, respondent No.9 was given the same mark by each one of the three Selection Committee members i.e. 12, which is quite unusual. On the other hand, petitioner was given low marks of 8, 6 and 6 respectively by the three Selection Committee members. Likewise, in the oral interview, Principal of the College gave 12 marks out of 15 to respondent No.9 as against 8 marks given to the petitioner. But the other member of the Selection Committee gave equal marks to both petitioner and respondent No.9 i.e. 10. According to the petitioner, respondent No.9 was wrongly given 5 marks out of 5 under the heading "research papers/articles" whereas respondent No.9 had published only his M.Phil dissertation in the form of a book.