HP High Court Quashes Assistant Professor Appointments at CSKHPKV
Shimla, September2 : The Himachal Pradesh High Court has struck down the selection of two Assistant Professors in Agricultural Biotechnology at Chaudhary Sarwan Kumar Himachal Pradesh Krishi Vishvavidyalaya (CSKHPKV), Palampur, holding that the university’s selection committee overstepped its authority by altering eligibility criteria mid-process.
Justice Sandeep Sharma, while deciding two clubbed writ petitions filed by Pankaj Kumar Singh and Dr. Sunny Choudhary, ruled that the selection committee had no jurisdiction to treat an M.Sc. in Biotechnology as equivalent to the advertised requirement of an M.Sc. in Agricultural Biotechnology.
The court noted that the 2019 recruitment advertisement explicitly prescribed “M.Sc. (Agricultural Biotechnology)” as the essential qualification, without any provision for equivalent degrees.
Despite this, 32 applicants without the requisite degree—including the two selected candidates—were allowed to appear for interviews based on “equivalence certificates” issued by the Registrar of another university.
“The Selection Committee, without authority, virtually changed the qualification criteria during the process, which is impermissible in law,” the court observed.
It held that the Registrar who issued the equivalence certificates lacked the competence to do so, as such decisions rest with a duly constituted expert body and require approval from the Academic Council.
Calling the move arbitrary, the court quashed the appointments made on December 24, 2021, and directed the university to consider only eligible candidates strictly in accordance with the original advertisement.
The verdict is expected to have wide implications for recruitment processes in state universities, underscoring that prescribed qualifications cannot be relaxed or reinterpreted midway to accommodate ineligible candidates.