Srinagar, July 21: Observing that there was no wilful disobedience to its orders by the J&K Service Selection Board, the High Court of J&K and Ladakh today dismissed a contempt petition regarding the posts of Assistant Information Officer Grade-II.
JKSSB had issued three different notifications in 2006, 2008 and 2010, inviting application for the posts of AIOs Grade-II.
While the High Court in 2013 had directed the JKSSB to go for a fresh selection of the AIOs, the order was upheld by the Supreme Court later.
The high court later directed the JKSSB to proceed with the selection process afresh in conformity with the rules. However, the government withdrew all the posts last year including the ones in which court cases are pending.
“The policy decision taken by the Administration, vide Decision No.1/1/2022 dated 29.01.2022 is to the effect that all posts referred to JKPSC/ JKSSB prior to 31.10.2019 for which selections have not been finalized till date, as also the posts in which there are litigations and the cases are pending in the Courts, shall be deemed to have been withdrawn with immediate effect,” said a division bench of Chief Justice N. Kotiswar Singh and Javed Iqbal Wani while ruling that the JKSSB cannot be said to have done willful disobedience to its order in view of the “policy decision” by the Administrative Council in 2022.
“In the present case, though the direction of the Court was to finalize the process of selection, yet the fact remains that selection was not finalized when the said policy decision was taken by the Administration on 29.01.2022,” the court said, adding, “Therefore, in the present case, even if, by virtue of the order dated 10.05.2013 passed by the Division Bench, the selection authority is under legal obligation to finalize the process of selection, yet since the finalization could not be accomplished before 29.01.2022 and even if the petitioners have a vested right to claim that process of selection be finalized in terms of the direction of the Division Bench dated 10.05.2013, they could not claim more than that.”
Further, the Bench said, since court cases were still pending, the bar imposed by the Administrative Council vide their decision on 29 January 2022 will come into operation.
The court said that selection and appointment are two different and distinct parts of a recruitment process which do not necessarily have to go together. “There is no inevitability of appointment merely because a person has been selected for appointment by being included in the select list,” the court said, adding, “Since, in the present case, there was no direction of the Division Bench to appoint the selected candidates, it cannot be said that petitioners have a vested right of appointment.”
The court also answered another issue raised by the petitioners that the authorities could not have taken any executive decision which would come in the way of implementation of the judicial order and such an executive act could amount to violation of the judicial order.
“If the administrative decision was taken specifically to nullify the effect of a judicial order in a particular case, certainly it will amount to violation of the court order,” the court said, adding, “However, in the present case, what is worth considering is that the administrative decision taken on 29.01.2022 was not with regard to a particular case or with specific reference to the order dated 10.05.2013 but was of a general nature which was applicable to all those cases….Thus, we are of the view that said policy decision taken was certainly not keeping in mind specifically the present case and, as such, we are of the view that it was not done intentionally or deliberately to nullify the effect of the order of the court.”
