The Delhi High Court on Tuesday sought the Delhi government’s response on a plea seeking direction to authorities to investigate the selection of 35 newly recruited government school principals. It has been alleged in the public interest litigation (PIL) that they submitted “forged and fabricated documents”.
Besides the response of the Delhi government, a bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet PS Arora also sought the responses the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and the principals. The high court has listed the matter for further hearing on July 8.
The PIL has alleged that the 35 candidates somehow managed to “maliciously misrepresent themselves and were selected illegally”. The Delhi government’s Department of Education miserably failed to scrutinise the requisite documents submitted by them, resulting in their erroneous selections, it alleged. During the hearing, the counsel for petitioner Navendu Charitable Trust claimed that it has evidence against some other principals also.
The court had earlier asked the petitioner to make the people against whom allegations have been levelled as party to the case. The petition alleged that while some of these 35 candidates submitted fake Economically Weaker Section (EWS) certificates for their selection despite having an annual family income above Rs 8 lakh, others took advantage of the reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) and presented fake experience documents.
The plea said the petitioner could only trace a few of these candidates. There might be a lot more misrepresentation and illegal selections, it claimed. “Due to the erroneous and wrong selection, a number of deserving candidates have been rejected, resulting in violation of Article 16 of the Constitution. These candidates are for probation period and withdrawing more than Rs 1.75 lakh (monthly) salary. If they become permanent, the procedure for investigation will become more complex,” the plea said.
“Due to the scam, actual deserving employees are suffering and unemployment is one of the utmost issues in India and amongst this high unemployment rate, this despicable fraud is happening,” it alleged. The petition said school principals hold the utmost responsibility of the future of numerous children, and society can never tolerate corruption in the selection of candidates for the post.
It is the duty of the Delhi government’s education department to verify all records submitted by the candidates selected but it has not fulfilled its responsibility, and due to this carelessness and irresponsibility, these 35 and other misrepresented candidates have been selected for the post of principal, the plea alleged. It sought a direction to the Delhi government to investigate the selection of these candidates before their probation period ends and to hold an inquiry without any arbitrariness.
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