CHARANJEET KAUR Vs. STATE OF HARYANA AND OTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The present judgment adjudicates upon two writ petitions being C. W. P. No. 19965 of 2013 and C. W. P. No. 22491 of 2013, as the facts and issues of law raised in both of them are similar. However, for the sake of convenience, facts are being extracted from C. W. P. No. 19965 of 2013 Charanjeet Kaur vs. State of Haryana and others. Shorn of unnecessary details, the necessary facts, which are borne out from the record of the case and which have emerged from the arguments raised at the bar are that the petitioner, who was a Guest Faculty Lecturer, made an application in response to an advertisement dated 07.06.2012 (Annexure P-7) for consideration of her candidature for appointment as a Post Graduate Teacher (PGT), Punjabi. The petitioner had not qualified the Haryana Teacher's Eligibility Test (HTET), which was an essential qualification and for such candidates, the aforementioned advertisement provided that in case, the applicants had four years of certified service, then he/she would be exempted from having passed the HTET. The petitioner's candidature was rejected as according to the respondents, she did not have the requisite four year's service. Since the petitioner was a Guest Faculty Lecturer, for calculating the period of her service, the respondents had applied a formula, which was as per the policy decision/instructions of the Government dated 12.12.2008. Such a formula had been applied after considering the number of periods, per day, being taught by a Guest Faculty Lecturer as they were considerably less than being taught by a regular teacher. The rejection of her candidature for want of requisite service and the policy/instructions of the Government dated 12.12.2008 are challenged through the present petition. Identically placed Guest Faculty Lecturers like the petitioner, raising similar issues, had earlier approached this Court through a bunch of petitions, the lead case in which was C. W. P. No. 21576 of 2012 Karpal Singh vs. State of Haryana and others. A learned Single Judge, afer considering the issue in much detail, dismissed those petitions vide his order dated 18.12.2013, by holding as under :-

(2.) A perusal of the judgment quoted above clearly shows that the petitioners therein and the petitioner herein were identically placed. The learned Single Judge rejected the writ petitions filed by the identically placed persons after holding that the exemption from passing of the HTET was by way of a concession and for the grant of a concession, the formula adopted by the Government was legal, constitutional and not arbitrary. According to the learned Single Judge, it was no more than a workable solution to a problem arising out of operation of the Guest Faculty system in order to meet an extra-ordinary situation arising from the failure of the State in timely filling up of substantive posts of teachers through recruitment consistent with Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution of India.

(3.) The learned Single Judge was further of the view that laying down of policy, which is impugned in the present writ petition, was the prerogative of the Government and declined to interfere, as according to him, the policy was not perverse or irrational or discriminatory.