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Setback for Soren govt as J’khand HC scraps class 10th,12th-based recruitment rules
The Hemant Soren cabinet on August 5, 2021, had given its nod to the amendments in the rules of examination to be conducted by the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC).
RANCHI: The Jharkhand high court on Friday scrapped the JSSC examination (amendment) rules 2021, which made it mandatory for job aspirants to have passed classes 10th and 12th from the state in order to apply for it, besides excluding Hindi and English from the list of regional language paper even as languages like Urdu, Bengali and Odiya were made a part of it.
The Hemant Soren cabinet on August 5, 2021, had given its nod to the amendments in the rules of examination to be conducted by the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC).
However, delivering its verdict on a writ petition filed by Vijay Hansda challenging the new rules, the division bench of chief justice Ravi Ranjan and justice Sujit Narayan Prasad, held the amendments violative of the Constitution.
“The bench has termed the amended rules to be violative of the principles of equality under Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. Describing the rules as bad in law, the bench has directed the JSSC to come up with a new set of advertisements for all job examinations that it might have or is conducting based on these two amended rules,” said former advocate general Ajit Kumar, who had appeared for the petitioner.
“As part of the hearing, the court had already passed an interim order earlier stating that all job advertisements and examinations being conducted would be impacted by the outcome of the writ petition,” Kumar said.
The verdict comes as a setback for the Hemant Soren-led UPA government as it has been flagging the decision as a major step by it in ensuring that third and fourth-grade jobs go only to the locals.
Reacting to the development at a public rally in Deoghar, the CM, who is on his ‘Khatiyan Johar Yatra’, described the decision as unfortunate.
“I have just come to know about the verdict. It is unfortunate. There are such rules in other states as well. We will take legal opinion on the issue. Rest assured that we will protect the interest of the Jharkhandis,” Soren said.
JMM spokesperson Manoj Pandey said the amendments were brought in to protect the interest of local youths and the state is likely to challenge the verdict in Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the opposition BJP, which has been critical of the amendments since the beginning, got a shot in the arm to corner the JMM-Congress-RJD combined government.
“These rules were clearly discriminatory and against the interest of many locals. While many youths were being left out just because they passed out from other states, outsiders who just by doing class 10th and 12th from here had become eligible for jobs. Also, the government had crossed all limits of appeasement by including Urdu in the mandatory regional language paper but had kept Hindi out of it despite it being the most dominant language in the state,” said Jharkhand BJP chief Deepak Prakash.
