The Madras High Court on Friday permitted its Registrar General to carry on with the recruitment process for appointing 68 sweepers and 59 sanitary workers with a rider that the selections as well as appointments shall be subject to the result of a public interest litigation petition which had questioned the appropriateness of having issued the recruitment notification only in English and not Tamil too.
A Division Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and N. Seshasayee passed the interim order since the petitioner’s counsel M. Radhakrishnan contended that the minimum qualification prescribed for the jobs was only a pass in Class 8 and people with such qualification would not be able to read and comprehend the 13-page English recruitment notification.
New Bench
Earlier, Chief Justice Indira Banerjee had recused from the case since she was a signatory to the process of approving the recruitment notification on the administrative side.
She said the case could not be posted before two other judges who were also part of the process since they had recommended the notification to her in their capacity of having been members of the recruitment committee.
Stating that “justice should not only be done but also seen to be done,” the Chief Justice ordered constitution of a Special Bench led by Mr. Justice Sathyanarayanan and Mr. Justice Seshasayee and directed the High Court Registry to post the PIL petition before them immediately since the written examinations for the recruitment was scheduled to be held on Sunday.
When the matter was heard by the Special Bench, the petitioner’s counsel contended that only people from the disadvantaged sections of society applied for such jobs.
Disagreeing with this, Mr. Justice Seshasayee recalled an incident when a law graduate had applied for the post of office assistant when he joined judicial service as a trainee district judge in Chengalpatttu district.
“Then Justice G.M. Akbar Ali was the principal district judge. “He and I were shocked to see a law graduate apply for the post of Office Assistant. We tried to persuade that gentleman to withdraw his application but he refused.
He was ready to do any kind of work, even to carry others’ shoes. I could not control my emotions and tears rolled down my eyes to see such an educated man willing to do menial jobs,” he said.
