CWP No.1213 of 2009 1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB & HARYANA, CHANDIGARH CWP No. 1213 of 2009 Date of decision February 4 , 2010 Haravtar Singh and another ....... Petitioners Versus State of Punjab and others ........ Respondents CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE K. KANNAN Present:- Mr. R. K. Malik, Senior Advocate with Mr. Jitender Bedwal, Advocate for the petitioners. Mr. Shekhar Verma Advocate for respondent Nos. 2 and 3. Mr. Manohar Lall, Additional Advocate General, Punjab for respondent No.1. **** 1. Whether reporters of local newspapers may be allowed to see the judgment ? No 2. To be referred to the reporters or not? No 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the digest? No ****** K. Kannan, J (oral). 1. The petitioner's complain against the respondent's act of not allowing the petitioner to join in spite of giving an offer of appointment on the basis of an application and interview. The petitioners were responding to an advertisement for appointment as Computer Teachers on contractual basis in all the Districts of Punjab in ICT Project. The last date for submission of applications was 21.4.2008 up to 5.00 P.M. The candidates who were eligible for consideration were, among others, those who had passed B.Sc or B.C.A. with Computer Science and Internet Science or MCA or M.Sc with IT/Computer Science/Software/Software system. The first petitioner claims to be a MCA graduate and the second petitioner applied with a B.Sc degree certificate. According to the CWP No.1213 of 2009 2 petitioners although, they had been issued letters of offer for contractual appointment by letter issued by the Director General of School Education- cum-CEOP, Punjab by his order dated 13.8.2008, ultimately they were not permitted to report for duty. The contention of the learned counsel for the petitioner was that they came to know that the degrees were not accepted as qualifying for the eligible criteria laid in the advertisement. Learned counsel refers to the equivalency notification issued by Panjab University and would submit that the BCA or B.Sc with Computer Science and lateral passing of three year diploma in Engineering as equivalent to BCA issued by the Panjab University. According to him, the petitioner's respective degrees were equivalent to BCA and the rejection of their candidatures was not appropriate. 2. The statement in defence on behalf of the respondents is that last date of submission of application was 21.4.2008 and as far as the Ist petitioner was concerned, he had acquired his MCA qualification only in August, 2008 and at the relevant time cut off date viz. 21.4.2008, he had not qualified in MCA and therefore he was not entitled to consideration. Since BCA qualification was also sufficient for consideration. It has to be seen if the first petitioner had at least the relevant graduate qualification. He was a B.Sc graduate but not in the stream of IT or Internet Science, therefore, the petitioner cannot call himself to be qualified in the manner sought for in the advertisement. As regards the second petitioner he was B.Sc graduate in non-medical with Physics, Chemistry and Computer Science as subjects. The requirement as per the advertisement was that a B.Sc graduate ought to have passed with IT, Computer Science or Internet Science as full subjects and qualifying in any one of the subjects among other subjects in the graduate course was not sufficient. Learned counsel for the respondents would also point out to the proforma that was required to be filled up by the candidates CWP No.1213 of 2009 3 where the educational qualification was required under the advertisement was still made explicit that candidates with the under graduate course would have minimum three years course duration with full subjects and not merely a single subject. It could be noticed that the second petitioner has Computer Science as merely one of the subjects of study and he had not “full subjects” in the relevant field. The non-consideration of the petitioners had a valid justification and the petitioners cannot have any remedy before this Court. 3. The writ petition is accordingly dismissed. No costs. (K. KANNAN) JUDGE February 4 ,2010 archana