The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the Haryana government’s plea challenging the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s order quashing its (Haryana) policy of granting five extra marks in recruitment exams to candidates belonging to certain sections of domiciles based on socio-economic criteria.
Upholding the High Court’s order quashing Haryana’s policy of granting additional marks to locals based on socio-economic criteria, a vacation bench of Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice Rajesh Bindal also refused the Haryana government’s plea to allow to retain the results of written exams to be considered for the recruitment.
“After perusing the impugned judgment, we find absolutely no error in the impugned judgment. The special leave petitions are dismissed,” the vacation bench said, observing that “the High Court should have said something more about it.”
Refusing to interfere with the High Court judgment, the vacation bench observed that the policy of the State Government was a mere ‘populist measure’ and deviated from the principle of giving priority to merit.
Justice Oak said, “Meritorious candidate after his performance gets 60 marks, somebody else has also got 60 marks but only because 5 grace marks, he goes up…They are all populist measures…How do you defend such an action that somebody is getting 5 marks extra?”
The High Court held as “unconstitutional” the socio-economic criteria prescribed by the Haryana government to grant additional marks to certain classes of candidates in state government jobs.
The quashed policy was targeted to give additional 5 marks to a candidate belonging to denotified tribes in Haryana whose families are not in public.