GURPREET SINGH Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB AND OTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petition has been filed for issuing a writ in the nature of mandamus directing the State of Punjab through its Secretary, Department of Home Affairs and Justice, Chandigarh (respondent No.1) to appoint an Enquiry Commission in the entire State of Punjab relating to scandal in the recruitment of 7654 posts of teaching and non-teaching staff in pursuance of an advertisement dated 23.09.2009 (Annexure P1) in the Education Department. The petitioner alleges that in the Education Department of the Punjab Government there are number of candidates who have been appointed in the teaching as well as non-teaching staff even though they did not apply for the post; besides, they had not gone through the selection process and were straightway issued appointment letters. This, according to the petitioner, has been done in connivance with the higher officials of the Education Department, as number of candidates having lesser marks have been appointed by ignoring candidates higher in merit.

(2.) The Principal Secretary, Department of Education (respondent No.2) advertised various posts in the Education Department including teaching and non-teaching staff vide advertisement published in the newspaper on 23.9.2009 (Annexure P1). A total number of 7654 teaching and non-teaching staff members were recruited pursuant to the said advertisement. The process of selection was outsourced through the Centre of Development of Advance Computing, Mohali (respondent No.10) ('C-DAC' - for short). All the candidates were to apply to the C-DAC (respondent No.10) through online. After scrutiny of each and every application, the C-DAC (respondent No.10) prepared a comparative merit of each and every candidate based on the academic qualifications of the candidates. On the basis of the merit list prepared by C-DAC (respondent No.10), the candidates appeared before Committees that were constituted for the counselling. Separate Committees were constituted for the male and female candidates. The Committee for selection of male candidates was chaired by Sh. Sadhu Singh Randhawa, Director, Education Department (Elementary), while that for the female candidates was chaired by Smt. Neelam Bhagat, State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), Punjab. The counselling was conducted by the said Committees and after counselling, the final selection list was sent to the C-DAC for issuing appointment letters to the candidates. It is submitted that from the above said 7654 posts, the non-teaching posts were as follows:- <FRM>JUDGEMENT_57_LAWS(P&H)9_2016.html</FRM>

(3.) From amongst the posts for the teaching staff, there were various posts of Lecturers to Masters/Mistresses including vocational Masters/Mistresses/Art and Craft Teachers etc.