The Delhi High Court on Monday stayed an order by the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) quashing the recruitment of 25 reporter-cum-anchors taken on a three-year contract by Doordarshan News in February 2009.
The Tribunal had last year quashed the recruitment on a petition by an employee of DD News alleging that there were gross irregularities in the recruitment. Applicants who were at the bottom in the merit list of the written examination were called for interview and recruited by granting them disproportionately higher marks to enable them make the grade, he stated.
The petitioner's further allegation against the recruitment process, which was admitted by the Tribunal, was that the recruitment committee had called the applicants for the interview to ensure that the favourites were not left out.
The irregularities were committed to accommodate the relatives of two Unions Ministers and others who were politically well connected, the petitioner said.
No advertisement
Also, there was no advertisement of the vacancies. DD News had just run a scroll on the channel about them.
The written test for the applicants was conducted by a private company run by a group of retired officers of Doordarshan, on payment of a fee.
Staying the tribunal's order, a Division Bench of the court comprising Justices Dipak Misra and Sanjiv Khanna asked the Centre and Prasar Bharati, running the news channel, to file replies to the petition by May 10.
The court stayed the Tribunal's order on a batch of petitions by some of the news channel's employees who have been affected by the quashing of the appointments.
The term of these employees will end in February, 2012.
