The Madras High Court on Tuesday ordered that status quo be maintained with regard to campus interviews for recruitment by Central and State Government undertakings.
The First Bench comprising the Chief Justice M.Y.Eqbal and Justice T.S.Sivagnanam passed the interim order on a petition by M.Palanimuthu, an advocate of Saidapet here seeking a direction to the authorities to ban all campus interviews and to forbear the Central and State Government undertakings from making recruitment from campuses.
The petitioner said in general, campus interviews/selections were illegal. Because of such recruitments, parents made a rush to those institutions for admissions thereby paving the way for collection of higher capitation fees. Several well-qualified candidates were waiting for employment after completing their education in universities and deemed universities, government and private engineering colleges. The Bench referred to its order of December 23 in which it had said the moot question for consideration was whether the procedure followed for campus interviews by public sector undertakings, like that of private institutions, was justified inasmuch as there were chances of good candidates being discriminated against.
Candidates who got registered in employment exchanges may also not get a chance. The Bench had ordered that the matter be put up after six weeks and in the meantime, the petitioner should serve a copy on the respondents. When the matter came up on Tuesday, the Bench observed that no counter affidavit had been filed. Instead, counsel sought time to file counter. The court ordered that the matter be put up after two weeks. “In the meantime, status quo with regard to campus selection may be maintained by the concerned respondents.”
