The Supreme Court has questioned the changing political positions of successive Karnataka governments in a 15-year-old recruitment scandal, observing that the government’s shifting stances, depending on the “hues and colours” of changing political times, had left thousands of jobseekers in limbo while shielding appointments tainted by “rampant corruption and blatant nepotism”.
Striking down a 2022 Karnataka law that sought to validate the recruitment of 362 gazetted probationers, a bench of justices JB Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran said the legislation was an attempt to nullify the judgments of the Karnataka high court and the Supreme Court in 2018, which upheld the cancellation of the entire selection process.
The bench said the legislature could not sit in appeal over judicial decisions and undo them through a law. “What comes to fore is an attempt by an unconnected individual to stultify a valid challenge to the notification,” the court said in its Thursday judgment, expressing “a little bit of surprise and a lot more alarm” at the manner in which the Karnataka high court subsequently dealt with challenges to the legislation.
The probe revealed gross manipulation, including rampant corruption and nepotism involving officials of the Karnataka Public Service Commission (KPSC). The judgment, authored by justice Chandran, was particularly critical of the state’s changing position on the recruitment. it later enacted the Karnataka Civil Services (Validation of Selection and Appointment of 2011 Batch Gazetted Probationers) Act, 2022, to revive the appointments While the government defended canceling the selection process after a CID investigation exposed widespread irregularities. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in power in the state when the legislation was enacted in 2022. Nearly 138,000 people applied for the 362 Group A and B posts after the government invited applications on November 3, 2011. Of them, 91,667 appeared for the preliminary examination. After complaints of irregularities in the selection process, the government withheld the final selection list in 2013 and ordered the criminal investigation department (CID) to conduct an inquiry.
During the latest hearing in the top court, senior counsel Kapil Sibal, representing the incumbent Congress-led state government, said it could not support the legislation at all.
“It is the shifting stances of the State, depending on the hues and colours in the changing times, we criticised at the outset,” the bench said, rejecting the argument that candidates who were not individually found tainted should be allowed to retain their appointments.
