The Tripura High Court has directed Tripura University to complete the long-pending recruitment process for the post of Professor in Pharmacy by conducting the interview of a shortlisted candidate within two months. The court also quashed the university’s March 16, 2021 communication that had effectively cancelled the selection process, holding that it had no legal basis and violated Article 14 of the Constitution.
A single bench of Justice Biswajit Palit passed the order while allowing a writ petition filed by Dr Biplab De, currently a Professor at the Regional Institute of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology (RIPSAT).
The dispute relates to a recruitment notification issued by Tripura University on May 5, 2016, inviting applications for several teaching posts, including one unreserved post of Professor in Pharmacy with specialisation in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Medicinal Chemistry. Dr De applied for the post and was shortlisted for an interview scheduled for October 31, 2017.
However, the interview was deferred after subject experts expressed their inability to assess candidates as their expertise did not match the advertised discipline. Despite repeated representations by Dr De requesting the university to complete the process, the university informed him in March 2021 that the recruitment had been affected by the implementation of the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) reservation policy and fresh recruitment advertisements.
Rejecting the university’s defence, the High Court observed that it failed to produce any document proving that the 2016 recruitment process had ever been formally cancelled. The court further noted that the university had filled several other posts advertised under the same 2016 notification, making its claim that the entire recruitment process had lapsed untenable.
The court also held that the university could not indefinitely postpone the interview on the ground that suitable subject experts were unavailable, observing that experts from other states could have been invited.
On the EWS reservation issue, the court ruled that the policy came into force only on February 1, 2019, and could not be applied retrospectively to nullify a recruitment process initiated in 2016.
Setting aside the March 16, 2021 communication, the High Court directed Tripura University to conduct Dr De’s interview for the Professor in Pharmacy post within two months of receiving the judgment.
