Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Nov 21: The Supreme Court has dismissed the plea seeking benefit of the verdict of High Court with regard to appointment of candidates as Naib Tehsildars (NTs) in 2016.
The bench of Justice M R Shah and Hima Kohli dismissed the Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by one Zahoor Ahmad Bhat seeking benefit of judgments of a single bench of High Court whereby the aggrieved candidates were directed to be appointed as NTs in the year 2016.
The writ court verdicts were challenged in a batch of appeals and the Division Bench of High Court dismissed those appeals. The dismissal of appeals were challenged before the Supreme Court and after having heard the counsel for appellant, the SC said there is no case made out to interfere with the DB judgment of High Court.
Three separate Advertisement Notices in the year 2002, 04.05.2005 and 26.05.2008 were issued by the SSB inviting applications for a total of 111 posts of Naib-Tehsildars. The selection process culminated in making recommendation by the Board in favour of selected candidates, who were appointed to the posts of NaibTehsildars. The process came to be completed in the year 2009- 10.
However, the selection came to be assailed before the High Court by some of the aggrieved candidates by way of writ petition and during pendency of the writ petition, an Experts Committee comprising Professors/Heads of Departments of Political Science, Geography, Economics, Environmental Science and History was constituted by the Court to examine the questions identified by the petitioners in the writ petition, which according to them, were wrong/vague.
The Experts Committee declared that 23 questions, out of 25 questions referred to the Committee, were vague/wrong with multiple correct answers or the answers given in the key were not the correct answers. The question-booklet comprised of 120 questions, out of which 23 questions were declared as wrong/vague. After taking note of the findings of the Experts Committee, the Writ Court disposed of the writ petition with direction to SSB assess and evaluate performance of petitioners and the selected (now appointed) 106 candidates.
The respondent Board has been further directed to redraw the merit list thereafter and recommend the candidates on the basis of merit for appointment as Naib-Tehsildars accordingly. Court further directed the authorities acting on the recommendations so received shall consider appointment of candidates recommended, thereafter, in accordance with rules.
Aggrieved by the directions of the writ court, various appeals came to be filed before the Division Bench of High Court and the court while upholding the decision of writ court dismissed the appeals and the dismissal has been challenged before the SC in the instant SLP.
The SC recorded that the recruitment in question is of the year 2002, 2005 and 2008 and still in 2022, the litigation has been continued. “There must be finality to the litigation. Even otherwise, the earlier judgment of 2014 upon which the reliance has been placed, cannot be said to be judgment in rem, as sought to be contended on behalf of the petitioners,” SC recorded and dismissed the Special Leave Petitions of appellant-Bhat.
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