Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Oct 15: High Court upheld the selection list of constables in J&K State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and held the plea of non-elected candidates as misconceived and dismissed the same.
The division bench of Chief Justice Arun Palli and Justice Rajnesh Oswal dismissed the plea of those candidates who did not succeed to make their place in the selection list. “The writ petition is found to be misconceived and is dismissed”, reads the judgment.
The select list under challenge was published by the authorities on its official website. As the petitioners were not selected, 52 unsuccessful candidates including the 14 petitioners filed a writ petition for assailing the select list and also sought a direction upon the official respondents to desist and refrain from acting upon the final select list and to consider their case for selection against the posts of Constables in SDRF J&K.
The aggrieved candidates submitted that they were verbally promised by the official respondents that the department was intending to select 850 candidates from Kashmir province and similar number of candidates from the Jammu province as well but the official respondents concealed the number of posts till the issuance of final select list.
The official respondents in opposition to the writ petition filed a detailed reply and denied that any promise was made regarding selection of 850 candidates each from Jammu and Kashmir provinces. It was also stated that in some Districts, suitable candidates belonging to certain reserved categories were not available, as such, in terms of Section 5 of the J&K Reservation Act, 2004, such reserved category posts remained unfilled.
The Government counsel argued that that after having participated in the selection process, the petitioners cannot assail the same by asserting that the number of posts was not mentioned in the initial advertisement notification.
The counsel further laid much stress that the number of posts category-wise was notified through the medium of Government order and the said order was again uploaded on the official website of the Police during the process of PET/PST.
The court said the contentions raised by the aggrieved candidates cannot form a basis either for quashing the select list or for directing the official respondents to appoint them as it is the sole prerogative of the employer to fill up a particular number of vacancies as per the requirement of the department and a candidate cannot dictate the employer to fill all the vacancies. “Otherwise also, in the response filed by the official respondents, it is stated that the posts are to be filled up on the basis of vacancies available at the relevant point of time”, the court added.
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