New Delhi, July 13 (IANS) The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the operation of a Madras High Court judgment that had quashed the appointment of 17 Personal Assistants (PAs) to its judges over alleged irregularities in the selection process.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta issued notice on a Special Leave Petition (SLP) challenging the July 1 judgment of the Madras High Court and stayed its operation.

The apex court directed that notice be made returnable in four weeks while granting an interim stay on the impugned judgment.

According to the case status available on the Supreme Court’s official website, the matter is likely to be listed for hearing on August 14.

The impugned judgment was passed by a division bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and N. Senthilkumar in a suo motu writ petition initiated over alleged irregularities in the recruitment process for the post of Personal Assistant to judges of the Madras High Court.

The High Court had held that the recruitment process suffered from multiple illegalities, observing that the circular governing the selection diluted the eligibility conditions prescribed under Rule 14A of the Madras High Court Service Rules, 2015.

It had said that permitting candidates without the prescribed Higher Grade qualification in English shorthand and typewriting to participate in the selection process and granting them two years to acquire the qualification was contrary to the statutory rules.

“This circular, per se runs contrary to Rule 14A,” the Madras High Court had observed, adding that “relaxation of a Rule through a Circular inviting applications, even before appointment, undermines the principle of equality and smacks of arbitrariness”.

It had further observed that over-aged and under-qualified candidates were allowed to participate in the recruitment process and were subsequently selected after being granted relaxation to cure their ineligibility.

Describing the deviations as “serious transgression of service rules”, the Division Bench had said that the selection process was “tainted with arbitrariness” and that “standards of merit have not been given enough weightage”.

The judgment also flagged alleged irregularities during the skill test, referring to official records indicating that CCTV footage appeared to show an Assistant Registrar interacting with certain candidates during the transcription test, “which seems that he would have helped the candidates for transcription”.

Further, the Madras High Court had observed that candidates who secured “zero marks (0 marks) in transcription have been selected for the post of P.A. to Hon’ble Judges”, adding that the discrepancies revealed that “selection itself is anti-thesis to merit”.

Rejecting the contention that the selected candidates had acquired the requisite qualifications during the pendency of the proceedings, the High Court had held that permitting them to continue would prejudice other eligible employees and create “a wrong precedent”. Setting aside the appointments made pursuant to the June 7, 2023 circular and the August 4, 2023 appointment order, the Madras High Court had granted liberty to the Registry to conduct a fresh selection in accordance with the Rules “as expeditiously as possible”.

–IANS

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