The Delhi High Court has restrained the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) from initiating any fresh recruitment process for the post of over 200 professors and associate professors until it publishes a newly prepared roster points for the vacancies.
A Bench of Justice Rajiv Sahai Endaw and Justice Sanjeev Narula also ordered JNU to “revisit and reexamine and recast the point-based roster for all posts and in the light of the judgment of the Single Judge [Bench of the High Court] and in accordance with the post-based reservation system”.
The court also clarified that the appointments already made will not be adversely affected.
The Single Judge Bench had on November 17 last year quashed JNU’s August 2019 advertisements with respect to two posts — associate professor and a professor in the School of Social Sciences (SSS) and the School of International Studies (SIS).
Reservation rosters
The court had then remarked: “The reservation rosters have to be post-based and there cannot be exchange of reservation points or de-reservation. The latter is permissible only in very exceptional cases and that too by following a very rigorous process.”
Post-based reservation mandates that specific teaching posts be reserved for persons belonging to reserved categories such as SC, ST and OBC.
Advocate Maanav Kumar, who represented the petitioners — 2 professors and 2 assistant professors — said that though the Single Judge Bench of the court found “illegalities/errors” in the post-based roster followed by JNU in issuing the 2019 recruitment advertisements, the order was restricted with regard to only two posts and not all 267 posts that was advertised.
Disappearance of posts
The plea contended that the “illegalities/errors” found in the two posts can be equally apply to other posts also. It stated that though the total number of vacant posts and those reserved for SC/STs had not undergone any significant change in recent years, in the 2019 advertisement, the number of “unfilled” SC/ST posts at JNU dropped from 91 in 2017 to 57 in 2019. The petition claimed that this removal/disappearance of over 30 such posts was illegal.
The plea stated that reservation of teaching posts for SCs/STs/OBCs follows the “backlog” rule which mandates that once a specific post has been earmarked for a certain reserved category, even if it remains vacant in that year, it is considered as a backlog vacancy and continues to be reserved for the same category in the next cycle of appointments.
The petition claimed that JNU has failed to maintain and carry forward SC/ST reserved “backlog” posts in the 2019 advertisements.
