Jehangir Rashid
SRINAGAR, Apr 24: Justice Hasnain Masoodi of the State High Court has posted the writ petition challenging the selection list of Assistant Information Officers (AIOs) for final hearing on April 30. The petitioners are demanding quashing of the selection list praying that the list is full of flaws.
As the case came up for hearing before the single bench of Justice Hasnain Masoodi, the counsel for private respondents Riyaz A Jan while expressing his urgency emphasized that the matter be argued at the earliest. Raising technical grounds, Jan urged that the stay should be vacated at the earliest.
Appearing for the petitioners counsels Mohammad Ashraf Wani and Vasundra Masoodi said that the case should be argued at length adding that they too want the case to be disposed off at the earliest. “We also want to argue the matter, which involves certain constitutional questions”, Vasundra submitted.
After hearing both the sides Justice Masoodi observed that the case requires file time for arguments. After this he directed the case to be taken up on April 30 (Monday) for final arguments.
It would be in place to mention here that on April 17, Justice Hasnain Masoodi had directed the State respondents to file their objections to the writ petition, failing which the Commissioner Secretary, Department of Information, was asked to appear in person when the case comes up for hearing once again.
The High Court stayed the selection list of 29 AIOs released by the Services Selection Board (SSB) on January 31 this year. The High Court issued the stay order on February 9, 2012, and also issued notices to both the State respondents and private respondents. The State respondents also included Commissioner Secretary Information and Secretary SSB directing them to file their response.
The petitioners Ashiq Hussain, Ishfaq A Tantray, Amin Masoodi and Irfan Qureshi in their separate petitions had submitted that an arbitrary criteria has been adopted by the SSB by considering viva voce marks while as the academics and other abilities of the candidates were overlooked.
“By adopting an arbitrary criteria, the Services Selection Board (SSB) has considered only the marks obtained in the interview, while as the academic excellence and merit of the candidates was ignored and rendered useless by giving equal points to all the candidates across the board”, the petitioners said.
Defending the selections made by the Services Selection Board (SSB), the private respondents through their counsel called the selection criteria adopted by the recruiting agency as level playing for all the candidates.
The private respondents claimed that academic merit referred to and relied upon by the writ petitioners in the para under reply is only one of the components of the merit required to be evaluated/assessed/determined by the selection body in the course of a selection and is not all and an end of the selection process.
In its objection the SSB has submitted that the petitioners after participating in the selection process cannot turn around and question the selection criteria after facing the failure.
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