The Telangana High Court said the ‘inconsistent and shifting grounds employed by the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TGPSC) in dealing with local candidature was undermining the credibility’ of its decision making process.

A bench of Justices P. Sam Koshy and Narsing Rao Nandikonda, dismissing an appeal filed by the TGPSC questioning a single judge order over local status of a candidate who appeared for selection Assistant Executive Engineer post, upheld the single judge order. Taking a serious note of the ‘inconsistent and shifting grounds’ of TGPSC over local status, the bench said such actions would also offend the requirement of uniform application of the Presidential Order.

The bench noted that sometimes the Commission’s rejection of local status was premised on alleged absence of four consecutive academic years and another time, it premised on the circumstances that classes First to Seventh were pursued outside Telangana. “Such fluctuating reasons — when advanced to sustain the same adverse outcome — disclose non-application of mind and failure to follow settled guidelines in a consistent and legally sustainable manner,” the bench said in the judgment.

The division bench noted that the Commission, being a statutory body, was supposed to strictly comply with the governing order, follow stable standards and avoid litigation that delay appointments. Such actions would unfairly burden the candidates also, it said. “Instituting and pursuing litigation on shifting premises without demonstrating a clear statutory mandate for the disqualification advanced, results in needless wastage of time, public resources and the candidate’s career prospects,” the judges said. The bench cannot countenance such actions, it said.

The petitioner Palla Nishanth studied in Andhra Pradesh from first standard to sixth standard in Andhra Pradesh. He got selected for the post of AEE but the Commission held that he was not a local candidate since he did not study in any multi-zone in Telangana for four consecutive academic years ending with seventh standard. This was the basis to treat a person as local candidate for any multi-zone in Telangana.

He approached the HC and the single judge passed an order treating him as local candidate. The TGPSC filed the appeal questioning the single judge order. The division bench observed that Commission cannot say only seventh standards was the benchmark for every post no matter what the minimum qualifying examination was prescribed for a post.

The Commission must understand the importance of the rule that a person had to be treated as local candidate if he or she studied for four continuous academic years ending with the year in which the candidate appeared for that qualifying examination, the bench said.