High Court quashes socioeconomic criteria in Haryana govt jobs

“The socioeconomic criteria has been held as unconstitutional and violative of Article 14, 15, 16. This was pronounced in the court Friday by a division bench,” said Sarthak Gupta, the counsel for one of the petitioners.

“There is a Haryana government policy for government recruitments for Group ‘C’, ‘D’ category jobs, under which they used to give some extra marks, weightage. In some recruitments, it was five marks weightage, in some it was 20. That policy has been declared unconstitutional,” he added.

However, a detailed order was yet to be released.

Among other petitioners, Gahlawat, a Group D candidate had pointed out that as per the selection criteria, 20 marks out of 100 have been earmarked for “socio-economic criteria and experience”, making them inter alia dependent on descent or the domicile of Haryana.

Gahlawat had contended that the grant of such additional marks is nothing but a form of reservation. The petitioner had thus sought directions for quashing the amendments to the extent that 20 out of 100 marks had been earmarked for the “socio-economic criteria and experience” by making it dependent on descent or Haryana domicile.

Shruti Jain Goyal, senior deputy advocate general of Haryana, said that the HC has quashed the socio-economic criteria introduced by the Haryana government for candidates of Group C and D. A detailed was awaited.

The Haryana government had introduced the socioeconomic criteria a few years ago, aiming to provide additional marks to certain classes of candidates, including those who don’t have any family member in government job, are state-domiciled and their family income does not exceed Rs 1.80 lakh per annum.

According to one of the petitioners, the said socioeconomic criteria is arbitrary, unconstitutional and illegal.

This is for the reasons, inter alia, that grant of additional marks to a certain class excluding the others is discriminatory and violative of Articles 14 and 16, the petitioner submitted.

The grant of additional marks to a certain class is in derogation of the settled law that for appointing persons to posts in public services through direct recruitment the criterion has to be pure merit, the petitioner had contended.

The criteria further discriminates on the basis of domicile and descent which are prohibited markers under Article 162 of Constitution, the petitioner had submitted.

There is no rationale for the grant of such additional marks to a certain class when reservations for the EWS as well as the socially backward classes such as Scheduled Castes SC and Backward Classes BC are already provided for, he had contended.