Madras High Court today directed all Transport Corporations functioning in Tamil Nadu to call for applications to fill up the posts by direct recruitment through open market besides calling for names from the employment exchange.
Justice D Hariparanthaman was disposing of a petition filed by one J.Kovaisamy (44) who had registered his name in the Employment Exchange two decades ago and yet to get employment.
In his order, the judge said "Now law is well settled that appointment to public employment shall be made not only through employment exchanges, but also through advertisement in newspapers, announcing in radio and television etc. Calling for applications from all the eligible candidates through open market. Hence the sponsorship through employment exchange lost relevance after the law declared by the Supreme Court."
Counsel for the Tamil Nadu Transport Corporation (Chennai) submitted that Kovaisamy had crossed the upper age limit prescribed. The Court had directed the corporation to produce relevant regulations relating to age limit for recruitment to the post of Technicians.
After perusing the records and observing that selections exclusively based on the interview is bad, the judge directed the Corporation to give one more opportunity to the petitioner to participate in the next selection process as he was 44 when he filed the plea and was well within the upper limit prescribed for his category for the post of Junior Assistant at that time.
The judge, while dealing with the selection process of the candidates, directed the Corporation to give weightage to the academic marks obtained in the educational qualification, prescribed under the service rules, or to hold written test commensurate with the qualification (10th standard or 12th Standard) as prescribed.
When the prescribed educational qualification is less than 10th Standard (SSLC) or prescribed qualification is a degree etc., the selection shall be based solely on written test commensurate with the qualification prescribed under the rules, the judge said.
The judge also said TNPSC being an expert body in the matter of recruitment to public offices, the transport corporations may recruit persons through it or from a Centralised Recruitment Agency to conduct written test and select candidates and further said it is left to the discretion of the corporations.
