The Madras Bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal has permitted the Union Home Ministry and the Director-General of Police in Puducherry to go ahead with the examination process for selection of constables, but authorities could not finalise the selection list for appointment of 468 constables in the Union Territory.
A Bench comprising judicial member K. Elango and administrative member R. Satapathy gave the interim order on an original application filed by G. Vinoth, who alleged that the authorities had arbitrarily altered the norms concerning educational qualification and upper age limit all of a sudden.
Mr. Vinoth said persons like him were affected by the sudden increase in the qualification for selection process. The authorities had increased the academic qualification from SSLC pass to higher secondary pass for the selection process. Besides, authorities have brought down the maximum age limit for selection to 22, while the original age limit was a minimum of 18 years to maximum of 27 years.
The altered norms, however, were not made applicable to home guards, who were given 25 per cent of the available vacancies, he said.
Moreover, the total reserved vacancies amounted to 64 per cent, which he said was against the ruling of the Supreme Court in the Indira Sawhney case.
The court had clearly stipulated that the maximum reservation should not exceed 50 per cent of available posts, he added.
