Less than two months after Haryana was directed to consider and regularise guest faculty teachers and lecturers working in government schools for nearly two decades, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has issued notice on a review petition. Among other things, it was alleged that the judgment was obtained by “practising fraud upon this court” through deliberate suppression of material facts, concealment of binding judicial precedents and misrepresentation of the applicable legal position by the petitioners “in collusion with the state of Haryana.”
At the onset, the counsel for the applicants argued that the policy dated September 18, 2006, itself demonstrated the true nature and object of the engagement of Guest Faculty Teachers. It clearly established that such engagement was intended only to meet emergent academic requirements until regular recruitment was undertaken and “was never conceived as a regular source of recruitment or as conferring any right of continuance or regularisation”.
The applicants further submitted that “the entire line of binding precedents governing the controversy was deliberately withheld from this court”. Referring to a previous judgment, they submitted that the state itself had categorically pleaded that Guest Faculty Teachers were engaged without any regular selection process through a limited zone of consideration and that permitting them to continue would eventually result in claims for regularisation at the cost of constitutionally eligible candidates.
The applicants further contended that the state’s subsequent executive attempts to perpetuate the continuance of Guest Teachers by granting adjustment, weightage, exemption from STET/HTET and age relaxation were “struck down by this court” in “Ashok Kumar versus state of Haryana” on the ground that such concessions amounted to “an indirect method of regularising persons who had entered service through an irregular and non-competitive process”.
It was added that the high court’s view was affirmed by the Supreme Court in “Mohinder Kumar versus state of Haryana”, where it was “categorically held that grant of weightage and exemption constituted an impermissible device to secure regularisation of Guest Teachers”.
The applicants also relied upon the division bench judgment in a PIL seeking quashing of the state’s action in perpetuating the engagement of Guest Teachers and a direction to fill vacant teaching posts through the regular recruitment process in accordance with the constitutional scheme.
The division bench, by judgment dated March 30, 2011, held that the engagement of Guest Faculty Teachers “was a back-door entry”, observed that the constitutional rights of eligible candidates under Articles 14 and 16 “could not be sacrificed by indefinitely continuing such temporary appointees”, permitted their continuance only up to March 31, 2012 as “a purely transitional measure”, and categorically directed that thereafter their services would stand terminated and all vacancies be filled only through regular recruitment.
The applicants further referred to the Supreme Court’s order dated March 30, 2012, which observed that “no further extension or deviation from the regular recruitment process would be permissible”.
The applicants further submitted that neither the petitioners nor the state disclosed that the Haryana Guest Teachers Service Act, 2019, as subsequently amended, now governs the entire field relating to the service conditions of Guest Teachers.
The counsel further submitted that the review applicants were regularly appointed PRT, TGT and PGT teachers. If the petitioners — whose initial engagement had consistently been held to be a temporary stop-gap arrangement — were permitted to be regularised pursuant to the impugned judgment, they would occupy substantive sanctioned posts and “thereby usurp the promotional avenues and service rights of the review applicants and other regularly appointed employees”, it was argued.
The applicants maintained that such regularisation “would defeat the very constitutional scheme of recruitment which this court and the Supreme Court have consistently protected through the aforesaid judgments”. Consequently, they submitted that the impugned judgment had resulted from deliberate concealment and suppression, which “strikes at the very administration of justice and constitutes fraud upon the court warranting exercise of the review jurisdiction”.
The matter has now been listed for September 9 after the state and the original petitioners sought time to file their replies. Additional Advocate-General Deepak Balyan appeared for the state of Haryana, while advocate Gaurav Tangri appeared for the non-applicant/petitioners and sought time to file replies to both applications.