IMPORTANT POINT
Appointment – In field of education, Court of Law cannot act as an expert normally – Whether or not a student/candidate is possessing requisite qualification should better be left to educational institutions, more particularly, when Expert Committee considers the matter.

JUDGMENT :

M.R. SHAH, J.

1. Feeling aggrieved and dissatisfied with the impugned judgments and orders passed by the Division Bench of the High Court in Letters Patent Appeal Nos. 796 of 2019 and 826 of 2019 by which the Division Bench of the High Court has confirmed the respective judgments and orders passed by the learned Single Judge of the High Court dismissing the writ petitions, the original writ petitioners have preferred the present appeals.

1.1 The present appeals are of two categories. Civil Appeal Nos. 2217-2218 of 2022, Civil Appeal No. 2219 of 2022 and Civil Appeal No. 2221 of 2022 are with respect to the writ petitioners, who applied for the post of Postgraduate Trained Teacher in the subject History and Civil Appeal No. 2220 of 2022 is with respect to the original writ petitioners, who applied for the post of Graduate Trained Teacher in the subject of History/Civics.

2. The facts leading to the present appeals in a nutshell are as under:-

Facts in respect of Postgraduate Trained Teachers

2.1 That the Department of Personnel, Administrative Reforms and Rajbhasha, Government of Jharkhand vide its letter dated 24.07.2017 forwarded requisition of the Department of School Education and Literacy (Secondary Education Directorate) Government of Jharkhand to the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (hereinafter referred to as “J.S.S.C.”) in terms of the Appointment Rules, 2012 for starting the selection process for appointment to the post of Postgraduate Trained Teachers in the High School of the State of Jharkhand for different subjects under different categories.

2.2 That the J.S.S.C. after receiving the request, started the selection process for appointment to the post of Postgraduate Trained Teachers (P.G.T.T.) in the State of Jharkhand in different subjects, i.e., Chemistry, Physics, History etc. Accordingly, advertisement No.10/2017 was issued by which applications were invited from the eligible candidates for considering their candidature for appointment to the post of Postgraduate Trained Teachers. It was a combined advertisement for the post of Postgraduate Trained Teachers for different subjects under different categories. The advertisement provided the pay-scale and minimum educational qualification for the posts. That as per the advertisement, the eligibility criteria for the post of Postgraduate Trained Teachers in the subject History was that a candidate must have obtained a Postgraduate degree with 50% marks in the related subjects (in the subject of History).

2.3 Pursuant to the advertisement, the respective original writ petitioners applied for the said posts and participated in the selection process. All of them submitted their application forms online and in their forms, they also mentioned their respective educational qualifications as Postgraduates in Hindi. They were allowed to appear in the examination, who were also declared successful on the basis of their performance in the examination. After publication of the result, successful candidates were required to get verification of their testimonials. At the time of verification of the testimonials, the respective original writ petitioners submitted their Postgraduate degree certificates. It was found that the respective original writ petitioners were having a Postgraduate degree in Medieval History; Ancient History; Ancient History and Culture; Ancient History, Culture and Archaeology etc. respectively from different universities and as such they failed to submit the Postgraduate degree in History in terms of the advertisement. It was found that the respective petitioners had Postgraduate degrees in one of branches of History in place of History as a whole and, therefore, show-cause notices were issued to them by J.S.S.C. to show-cause why their candidatures may not be cancelled as they failed to submit the certificate of Master of Arts (Post-graduation) with the subject “History”.

2.4 At that stage, some of the writ petitioners filed the writ petitions befor