‘Changing political winds, shifting stands’: SC strikes down 2022 Karnataka recruitment law

The Supreme Court has questioned the changing political positions of successive Karnataka governments in a 15-year-old recruitment scandal, observing that the government’s shifting stances, depending on the “hues and colours” of changing political times, had left thousands of jobseekers in limbo while shielding appointments tainted by “rampant corruption and blatant nepotism”.A view of the Supreme Court (HT FILE PHOTO)Striking down a 2022 Karnataka law that sought to validate the recruitment of 362 gazetted probationers, a bench of justices JB Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran said the legislation was an attempt to nullify the judgments of the Karnataka high court and the Supreme Court in 2018, which upheld the cancellation of the entire selection process.The bench said the legislature could not sit in appeal over judicial decisions and undo them through a law.“What comes to fore is an attempt by an unconnected individual to stultify a valid challenge to the notification,” the court said in its Thursday judgment, expressing “a little bit of surprise and a lot more alarm” at the manner in which the Karnataka high court subsequently dealt with challenges to the legislation.The judgment, authored by justice Chandran, was particularly critical of the state’s changing position on the recruitment. While the government defended canceling the selection process after a CID investigation exposed widespread irregularities, it later enacted the Karnataka Civil Services (Validation of Selection and Appointment of 2011 Batch Gazetted Probationers) Act, 2022, to revive the appointments.“It is the shifting stances of the State, depending on the hues and colours in the changing times, we criticised at the outset,” the bench said, rejecting the argument that candidates who were not individually found tainted should be allowed to retain their appointments.The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in power in the state when the legislation was enacted in 2022. During the latest hearing in the top court, senior counsel Kapil Sibal, representing the incumbent Congress-led state government, said it could not support the legislation at all.Senior counsel Shyam Divan appeared for petitioners assailing the 2022 law while senior advocates CA Sundaram and Anand Sanjay M Nuli argued for the successful candidates.Nearly 138,000 people applied for the 362 Group A and B posts after the government invited applications on November 3, 2011. Of them, 91,667 appeared for the preliminary examination. After complaints of irregularities in the selection process, the government withheld the final selection list in 2013 and ordered the criminal investigation department (CID) to conduct an inquiry. The probe revealed gross manipulation, including rampant corruption and nepotism involving officials of the Karnataka Public Service Commission (KPSC).The recruitment was canceled in 2014. The Karnataka Administrative Tribunal initially quashed the government’s decision, but the high court held that the irregularities vitiated the selection and reversed the decision. In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld the High Court decision.The courts noted evidence including call records between candidates and KPSC members, identical interview marks awarded to hundreds of candidates, and the replacement of the digital video recorder in the commission’s premises, apparently to destroy evidence. The high court described the irregularities in the evaluation of answer scripts as “outrageous and scandalous”, observing that they shook public confidence in a constitutional body entrusted with fair recruitment.Despite these findings, the Karnataka government enacted the 2022 law, reasoning that candidates should not suffer for wrongdoing by KPSC officials when they themselves had not been arrayed as accused in the criminal case.The Supreme Court rejected this justification, holding that the legislature had no authority to undo the cancellation after constitutional courts had upheld it. A law can retrospectively remove the legal defect on which a judicial decision is founded, but it cannot simply reverse an individual judicial determination, the bench said.“The lofty ideal stated in the legislation of providing justice to the 2011 Batch Gazetted Probationers falls flat for reason of the recruitment itself having been found tainted with corruption and nepotism by the High Court, which decision was upheld by this Court,” it said.The court also refused to accept the argument that candidates not found tainted in the CID investigation could be separated from those against whom allegations had surfaced. Once the selection process itself stood vitiated, there was no scope to segregate candidates on the basis of individual culpability, it said.“Having found the Act of 2022 unconstitutional, we cannot but observe that the appointments made pursuant to the tainted recruitment will also come to an end,” held the bench, setting aside the legislation and the high court orders that had allowed it to survive.Recognising that nearly 15 years had elapsed since the recruitment began, the court stopped short of directing the authorities to resume the old selection process. Instead, it directed the Karnataka government to initiate fresh recruitment for the vacancies that remain in Group A and B services under the prevailing recruitment rules.As a one-time concession, candidates appointed under the 2022 law but not found tainted, the six appellants who challenged the legislation, and the petitioners in pending proceedings before the tribunal will receive age relaxation to participate in the fresh selection alongside other eligible candidates.Those who secure appointments will have seniority only from the date of their fresh appointment and will not receive back wages or notional appointment for the intervening period. However, the period already spent in service by existing appointees who are selected again will count towards computation of their pension and retirement benefits.Opening his judgment with the observation that “when the winds of politics change direction, it is the common man, who gets caught in the storm”, justice Chandran noted that the recruitment had remained unresolved for a decade and a half, jeopardising the prospects of candidates who had since crossed the age limit and leaving even those selected uncertain about their future.