Top babu's ignorance of his department's affairs upsets HC

The Allahabad High Court today rebuked a principal secretary of the Uttar Pradesh government and its counsel for their failure to explain the reason behind lowering the minimum qualifying marks in the ongoing recruitment of assistant teachers in the state.

Exasperated with the officials' failure in satisfying its queries, a Lucknow bench of the high court ordered that the ongoing recruitment of 68,500 assistant teachers as per the original, higher qualifying marks set for the selection would be subject to the outcome of the appeals before it.

The bench of justices Shabihul Hasnain and Rajan Roy was hearing a bunch of appeals against a single-judge bench order which had on July 24 this year quashed the government's decision to lower the minimum qualifying marks for the appointment of teachers.

After originally fixing higher qualifying marks for the recruitment, the state government had lowered them on May 21, while the single-judge bench had stayed this decision.

It was during the hearing of appeals against this order by another group of petitioners, including one Avinash Kumar