The Supreme Court has upheld a Karnataka High Court division bench order that directed service-related disputes arising from the recruitment of graduate primary teachers to the Karnataka State Administrative Tribunal (KSAT), dismissing a batch of appeals challenging the referral.
A bench of Justices J.K. Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi held that the tribunal, not the High Court, is the appropriate forum to address grievances concerning the recruitment process. The court clarified that the High Court should not entertain writ petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution when an efficacious alternative remedy exists before a service tribunal.
“We are of the considered view that the division bench of the high court has rightly set aside the judgment passed by the single judge and had not committed any illegality in partly allowing the appeals by the first set of appellants (A) and relegating the matter to the KSAT for adjudication. The division bench of the high court had rightly held that their writ petitions before the high court are not maintainable,” Justice Vijay Bishnoi, who authored the judgment, said.
The dispute stems from a notification issued on March 21, 2022, by the Karnataka Department of Public Education to fill 15,000 posts of graduate primary teachers for classes 6 to 8 across 35 educational districts. After written examinations in May 2022, a provisional select list was published on November 18.
Several married women candidates from the OBC category were excluded from the list because they had submitted caste-cum-income certificates in their fathers’ names rather than their husbands’. Their names were moved to the general merit list, prompting them to file writ petitions before the Karnataka High Court.
On January 30, 2023, a single judge allowed their petitions, quashed the provisional select list, and directed authorities to treat such candidates as belonging to the OBC category. The state subsequently issued a fresh provisional select list on February 27, 2023, which led to the exclusion of 451 candidates who had been selected earlier. A final select list followed on March 8, 2023.
Those excluded then appealed to a division bench of the High Court, which on October 12, 2023, set aside the single judge’s order and directed that the matter be adjudicated by KSAT. It also allowed the state to proceed with appointments from the March 8 list, subject to verification of valid caste and income certificates.
The top court endorsed the division bench’s approach, holding that the High Court’s writ jurisdiction should not have been invoked in this case.
“Where an efficacious alternate remedy is available, the high court should not entertain a writ petition… The facts of the present case do not fall within any exception warranting such maintainability,” the bench observed.
It also ruled that no vested rights accrued to candidates whose names appeared in the provisional list of November 18, 2022. Therefore, their plea to revive that list was not legally sustainable.
While dismissing the appeals, the Supreme Court directed that 500 reserved posts be filled as per the final outcome of the KSAT’s decision. It urged the tribunal to decide the applications of affected candidates expeditiously, ideally within six months of their filing.
“It is expected that the KSAT shall make every endeavour to decide any application preferred on behalf of the appellants of the second set of appeals (B) pursuant to liberty granted by the division bench of the high court of Karnataka vide impugned judgment, expeditiously, preferably within six months,” the verdict stated.
The court clarified that it had only addressed the maintainability of the writ petitions before the High Court and had not examined the merits of the recruitment controversy.
