Hisar: The Punjab and Haryana high court has permitted a candidate for the post of assistant professor (commerce) in Haryana to provisionally appear for the interview after noting that she possessed a valid Haryana EWS certificate before the application deadline but had inadvertently uploaded a Central EWS certificate while submitting her online application.
Justice Deepak Gupta passed the order while hearing a writ petition filed by Priya Bansal, whose candidature under the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category was rejected during document verification for the assistant professor recruitment process.
The petitioner submitted that although she had obtained the requisite Haryana EWS certificate on August 16, 2024, she mistakenly uploaded a Central EWS certificate due to confusion arising from similar certificates and portal-generated download messages.
According to the petition, Bansal cleared the screening test and subject knowledge test and reached the document verification stage. However, her name was omitted from the list of candidates shortlisted for interview and placed in the rejection list on the ground that the uploaded certificate was valid only for jobs and admissions under the Centre and not for recruitment under the Haryana government.
During the hearing, the state conceded that both the Central EWS certificate and the Haryana EWS certificate were issued by the Naib Tehsildar, Sirsa, on the same date. The Haryana certificate fulfilled the state's eligibility requirement of annual family income below Rs 6 lakh and had been issued before the last date for submission of applications.
After considering the submissions, the high court directed the recruiting agency to permit the petitioner to provisionally participate in the interview or viva voce scheduled from June 16 to June 19. The court clarified that the relief would remain subject to the final outcome of the writ petition, which has been listed for further hearing on August 11.
