Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Sept 1: The High Court, in a major relief for the contractual lecturers and Assistant Professors appointed prior to 2010 and working continuously for seven years in various colleges, has directed the Government to constitute a six-member high level committee to find out these employees and consider them for regularization.
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The Division Bench of Justice Sanjeev Kumar and Justice Sanjay Parihar while deciding a batch of petitions seeking regularization against the posts for which the petitioners are working for more than 20 years directed their regularization.
The petitioners claimed that they have been working in the Higher Education Department as contractual lecturers in different disciplines having been engaged on an academic arrangement basis. Some of them claimed that they have been continuously working since 2003, while others claimed to have been working as such since the year 2006, against clear vacancies and are seeking regularization under e Jammu and Kashmir Civil Services (Special Provisions) Act, 2010.
The court has directed for the constitution of a High-Level Committee headed by the Chief Secretary, with the Secretaries to Government, Higher Education, General Administration Department, Finance Department and the Department of Law, as its members, within a period of one month.
“The Committee shall, within a period of two months, embark upon an exercise to identify those candidates who were appointed as Assistant Professors/ Librarians/ PTIs prior to the commencement of the Act of 2010, against clear vacant posts; who were in position on the said date; and who have rendered continuous service for a period of seven years or more”, the court directed.
Such candidates, court directed, who are found by the Committee to have been appointed against vacant posts prior to the commencement of the e Jammu and Kashmir Civil Services (Special Provisions) Act, 2010, and who satisfy the eligibility criteria, shall be considered for regularization under the Act of 2010 within one month thereafter;
“The regularization of those found entitled under the Act shall be given retrospective effect from the date they are found eligible for such regularization i.e those who completed continuous service of seven years on or before the commencement of the Act of 2010 shall be regularized from the date of commencement of the Act, while those who completed seven years of service after the commencement of the Act shall be regularized from the date on which they actually completed seven years of continuous service”, the court clarified.
The court has restrained the Government from making any fresh academic arrangements against clear vacancies of Assistant Professors, Librarians, and PTIs borne on the Jammu and Kashmir Education Gazetted Colleges Service Recruitment Rules 2008.
“Efforts shall be made to immediately refer all such vacant posts to the Jammu and Kashmir Public Service Commission for selection. The Committee shall also examine the desirability of creating additional posts of teaching faculty, Librarians, and in various degree colleges to meet the current and future demand of admissions and shall take requisite steps for creation of such additional posts, to be filled up only under the Recruitment Rules 2008 through a selection process conducted by the Public Service Commission”, read the judgment.
The court has further directed that all academic arrangements made dehors the vacancies or outside the sanctioned strength of Assistant Professors, Librarians, and PTIs shall be dispensed with from the next academic session, unless such engagements are required to meet the exigency of the situation obtaining in the next academic year and thereafter.
“Any such engagements, if made, shall be treated as fresh engagements, purely contractual in nature, and shall not confer any right of regularization under any law in force or that may be framed by the Government in future”, the court said.
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