‘Glaring irregularities’: SC scraps 1,091 asst professor jobs in Punjab

Recruitment process for appointing 67 librarians in govt colleges also quashed

- Utkarsh Anand

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday quashed the recruitment process for appointing 1,091 assistant professors and 67 librarians in Punjab’s government degree colleges, holding that the selection was not just arbitrary but also appeared driven by “narrow political gains” aimed at garnering electoral advantage.

In a stinging indictment of the recruitment exercise carried out by the then Charanjit Singh Channi-led Congress in the run-up to the 2022 Punjab assembly polls, a bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and K Vinod Chandran said the process undermined fairness and disregarded statutory norms.

“The entire process is arbitrary and was followed not in the interest of the state or for the cause of higher education but for narrow political gains,” held the court, adding that “the state has miserably failed to justify the departure from the standard norms of the recruitment process.”