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Chandigarh : The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Saturday stayed the appointment of 668 Panchayat Secretaries. The appointments were to be made in the Punjab Department of Rural Development and Panchayats.
The order by Justice Jaswant Singh came on the petitions by Sunil Kumar of Abohar and 30 others. They had challenged the non-inclusion of their names in the selection list on the grounds of their having passed computer application course from the ISO 9001:2008 certified institutes.
The court was told that the advertisement for recruitment was issued on August 4 and the selection list was issued on December 13 by the Subordinate Services Selection Board.
Appearing for the petitioners, Kapil Kakkar and R Kartikeya contended that some of the aspirants before applying for the post of panchayat secretaries had specifically asked the board whether the certificates obtained through ISO-certified institutes were valid.
In response, the board not only stated that the certificates were valid, but also loaded the information on their website. Still in the final selection list, the names of the petitioners were not included. Therefore, the respondent board’s action was not only illegal and arbitrary, but also against its own the stand. Kakkar said the board had declared that the qualification acquired through ISO-certified institutes was valid in earlier advertisements issued by it for clerks and steno typists. As such, the board could not adopt different yardsticks for recruitment of panchayat secretaries.