High Court Orders Haryana Government to Appoint Regular Faculty in Colleges

The Punjab and Haryana high court has directed Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) to put an end to the engagement of Guest lecturers to meet shortage of teaching faculty in state run colleges. The court has ordered HPSC to finish the selection process of around 1,400 regular assistant professors by 15 November which are also to be posted to their respective jobs by 31 December 2014.

Haryana has currently appointed a large number of contractual or guest teaching faculties to meet the acute shortage of teaching staff in state colleges. Those on-contract teachers are engaged in teaching for a long time now as the non-availability of the regular teaching faculty in Haryana was also disturbing the smooth functioning of colleges.

These orders were passed by Justice Augustine George Masih while hearing a petition filed by Rakesh Kumar. Through petition Rakesh sought directions to quash the action of Haryana government due to which the guest lecturers across the state colleges were getting engaged on contract basis and their appointments were being extended each year with no plan of recruiting those vacant posts on regular basis.

Taking up the petition, the high court also issued notice to Haryana government to file its reply on the issue. The Haryana government responded to the court that HPSC had already issued an advertisement on January 24 to recruit 1,396 posts of assistant professors in various subjects for the state government run colleges.

Justice Masih has also ordered the HPSC commission to finish the selection process and make recommendations for these posts to the state's higher education department by November 15, 2014.