The controversial appointment of District Information and Public Relations Officers (DIPROs) by the Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) has again come under the scanner of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana, which, on Thursday, prevented the state government from nominating another candidate.

DIPRO Selection – High Court restrains Appointment of Candidate
DIPRO Selection – High Court restrains Appointment of Candidate

Facts of the case

HC Justice Rajbir Singh Sehrawat passed these orders while hearing a petition filed by Savita, a resident of Hisar, and three other unsuccessful candidates. The petitioners demanded instructions to set aside the outcome of the decision of 21 September 2020 declared by the HPSC for the post of DIPRO on the ground that all four candidates had been illegally, illegally and arbitrarily shown to be eligible and had been selected despite the fact that they did not meet the eligibility criteria for the post as per the announcement on the deadline.

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The key claims in the petition are that some of the selected applicants do not have the appropriate certificate of experience or have created ambiguous certificates of experience to secure a job. Specifically, it was reported that one Aditya Choudhary was selected by the HPSC by changing the result after the declaration for “extraneous reasons.”

Legal Standpoint

The DIPRO selection process undertaken by the HPSC has been contentious from the outset. The first advertising for this post was released in September 2015. Subsequently, the post was re-advertised on two more occasions by the Commission issuing the corrigendum. Any of the applicants chosen were either not eligible or their applications were refused on the basis of the first advertising.

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The HC provided a notice to the Haryana Government, the HPSC and four selected candidates, including Aditya Choudhary, Sumit Chawla, Sonia and Rajan Sharma, who were selected to serve on the Commission. Although the selection process had been pending for the last five years, the Commission abruptly declared that it would be conducting the examination in August of this year without informing the candidates. As a result, less than 100 of the totals of about 250 eligible applicants will be eligible for the test.

Conclusion

The matter will now come up for a hearing before the HC on 14 October, along with a related petition opposing these appointments. On September 25, the HC withdrew the state from having the nominee chosen to enter the post for ex-servicemen group.

The majority were refused admission to the review because there was no sufficient intimation of the review of the applicants by the Commission for which separate petitions were filed before the HC. A total of seven petitions have been filed before the High Court for the selection process to date.

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This post is written by Kosha Doshi. More on 99888-17966.