The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Monday reserved its order on three special pleas of the UP government challenging the stay on the appointment of 69,000 assistant basic teachers in the state.
The matter was heard by a division bench of Justices P K Jaiswal and D K Singh.
Earlier, the matter was listed for hearing on June 9 but on a request of the state, the court heard the issue on Monday.
On Sunday, the UP Examination Regulatory Authority (ERA) had filed the appeal on behalf of the state government against a single-bench interim order, terming it ‘unwarranted and illegal’. Justice Alok Mathur of the Lucknow bench on June 3 had stayed the selection process, prima facie finding that certain questions and answers were ‘ambiguous and wrong’ and, hence, required fresh scrutiny by the UGC.
The HC bench had held that there has been an ‘error’ in the evaluation of question paper. In its appeals, the ERA pleaded that the single-bench order was not sustainable as it did not consider the preliminary objection of maintainability in the right perspective as the writ petitions were not maintainable because the petitioners had not arrayed all candidates who had stood successful in the result declared on May 8.
For the state government, Advocate General Raghvendra Singh argued that the ERA had the final say in case of any dispute regarding questions and answers and once it took a decision on the basis of opinion of experts, the same cannot be questioned.
Opposing the pleas, senior lawyers L P Mishra, HGS Parihar, Asit Chaturvedi, JN Mathur and Sudeep Seth stressed that the single-bench interim order was just and proper and there was no illegality in it.
“The single-bench order is detailed and exhaustive and once it finds from records that certain questions and answers were false and ambiguous, it could not shut its eyes,” argued the senior lawyers. Taking up the written submission of Mishra, the division bench directed other senior lawyers to submit their submissions on behalf of their clients by 10 am on Tuesday.
The bench said it was reserving its order to be pronounced later.
The recruitment examination was held on January 6, 2019 and its result was declared on May 12 this year.
Earlier, the Supreme Court on May 21 had asked the state government to explain the process adopted for the appointment through a chart, posting the matter for further hearing on July 6. It asked the Uttar Pradesh government to explain why it changed the earlier criteria of 45 per cent cut-off marks for the general category and 40 per cent for the reserved category.
