Point of Law: Appointments are to be made strictly in accordance with merits on basis of their position in merit list.

JUDGMENT :

1. The extraordinary powers under Article 226 of the Constitution of India is being sought to be invoked by means of this petition which has been filed in connection with a recruitment process for Assistant Teachers of various LP/UP Schools in the State of Assam.

2. Before going to the issue which has arisen for determination, the facts of the case may be stated in brief in the following manner.

3. The case has a chequered history as there were a number of litigations which had gone up to the Hon’ble Supreme Court and the present writ petition is an offshoot of the earlier proceedings.

4. On 11.09.2020, an advertisement was issued for filling up 3,941 (Three Thousand Nine Hundred Forty One) vacancies of Assistant Teachers of LP/UP Schools in the State of Assam. The said advertisement however contained a condition that candidates who were Assam State TET qualified would only be allowed to participate and Central TET qualified candidates were excluded from the purview of the recruitment process. It is the case of the petitioners that in all prior recruitment process, there was no such distinction between State TET qualification and Central TET qualification.

5. Being aggrieved by the said condition, writ petitions were filed by the petitioners along with others which was registered as WP(C)/3720/2020. This Court vide an order dated 24.09.2020 had allowed offline participation of the petitioners and it is submitted that in pursuance with such permission, the petitioners had submitted their applications offline. The said writ petitions were however dismissed vide an order dated 18.12.2020, the lead case being WP(C)/4174/2020.

6. The said order was the subject matter of challenge in Writ Appeal 24/2021 which was filed on 25.01.2021. It is submitted that the Hon’ble Division Bench had made an observation that no interim order was required as a statement was made by the learned counsel representing the Department that due consideration would be made. Subsequently, vide order dated 03.02.2021, the Writ Appeal was allowed. It is however clarified that amongst the 916 numbers of writ petitioners, the same included 581 candidates who had applied under the Director of Elementary Education and 335 candidates had applied under the SSA. Since there was a requirement of some clarification, on the very next date of passing the judgment, the petitioners had filed I.A. No. 258/2021 on 04.02.2021 in which time was taken to file objection by the Department which was ultimately done on 11.02.2021. On 12.02.2021, the matter was taken up for consideration and the last paragraph of the judgment dated 03.02.2021 was clarified to mean that there would be no ambiguity in the direction that the petitioners who are Central TET qualified were directed to be considered. The order of the Hon’ble Division Bench was unsuccessfully challenged by the Department in the Hon’ble Supreme Court in SLP(C) No. 9032-9033/2021 and the SLP was dismissed on 03.09.2021.

7. In the meantime, the petitioners after waiting for a long period of time had instituted Contempt Case No. 296/2021 in which notices were issued. Thereafter, on 04.05.2022, an advertisement was issued specifically mentioning that it was meant for the writ petitioners in the petitions which were filed in connection with the advertisement dated 11.09.2020. The advertisement/notice dated 04.05.2022 had directed submission of application online which the petitioners had accordingly done. There is a further notification dated 25.05.2022 whereby the Department has verified that the process was to verify/assess the position of the candidates in the select list.

8. However, on 28.10.2022, a notification has been published giving the break-up of vacancies. From the said break-up which are given in a tabular form, vacancies were mainly existing in ST (H) and ST (P) categories and the petitioners were mainly in the categories of OBC, MOBC, SC and unreserved. As a result, the scope of a due consideration has