Tarvinder Kaur vs State of Punjab

K. Kannan, J.—The petitioner who was assigned in the merit-list at Serial No. 77 was not selected for Master/Mistress post, for which she competed and came by an adverse result of rejection on the ground that she did not fulfil the requisite qualifications for the post. The advertisement notification spelt out that the candidate shall be B.Sc. from the recognized university with any three of the six subjects, namely, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Botany, Zoology and Computer Science/Electronics in all the three years of graduation with B.Ed. Admittedly, the petitioner has only two subjects, namely, Chemistry and Botany in her graduate course. This was the ground for rejection of her claim to appointment. The counsel points out to me the statutory rule under Punjab State Education Class-III (School Cadre) Service (Ist Amendment), 1995 under which the qualification stipulated is B.Sc. With B.T. or B.Ed. and two subjects out of the four subjects in B.Sc., namely Physics, Chemistry, Botany and Zoology. The argument is that since the statutory rule provides for any two subjects in the graduate course, the additional subject mentioned in the advertisement notification was not valid and therefore lack of such qualification could not be a ground for rejection of her appointment. The counsel would rely on a Division Bench judgment of this Court in State of Punjab and others Versus Priya Mahajan and others in LPA No. 1988 of 2011, decided on 16.01.2013 wherein it has been held that even a challenge, post selection after responding to an advertisement notification, could validly be sustained if it was in contrary to the statutory rule.

The contention in reply by the State is that the appointments have not been for regular vacancies but for temporary posts on consolidated pay and therefore the statutory rule did not apply.

To a query by the Court whether the persons were appointed through the selection process had been made regular or not, the counsel for the State admits that they all were regularized. This contention that the appointment was only for temporary post and therefore the statutory rules did not apply, cannot be, therefore, sustained.

In the light of the decision of the Division Bench rendered on 16.01.2013, there is no escape from the conclusion that the denial of appointment to the petitioner was not justified. There shall be a mandamus to the 2nd respondent to issue an appointment order to the petitioner as a Science Mistress in the general category. She will be deemed to be appointed from the date when the persons of her batch were provided with the order of appointment. However, there shall be no arrears of pay for the period during the time when she was not working. The appointment order shall be issued within a period of 4 weeks from the date of receipt of copy of the order. The writ petition is allowed.