A recent High Court order regarding the selection process for upper primary teachers has come as a relief for the Kerala Public Service Commission (PSC), which has been facing relentless online campaigns from job aspirants as well as political groups.
A group of 163 applicants for the teacher post had approached the Kerala Administrative Tribunal as well as the High Court claiming that their applications were rejected even though they had uploaded the applications online.
Following the complaint, the PSC had appointed a technical committee consisting of four independent experts to look into the software system used for the application process. According to the committee’s findings, there was no technical error in the system and the complainants had not properly uploaded the applications to the system. More than 1 lakh candidates had already applied online through the same software system.
Tarnishing image
PSC counsel submitted in the High Court that a largescale attempt was being made of late by groups of people to tarnish the image of the commission. WhatsApp groups were formed to coordinate activities to raise allegations and file irrelevant petitions.
The High Court, in its order issued on November 5, found the petition filed by the group to be frivolous and vexatious as a large number of other candidates had applied online indicating that there was no deficiency in the PSC software.
“The court, while dismissing the petition filed by the applicants, even observed that it was a fit case in which some cost has to be imposed on the petitioners. However, taking into account the fact that the petitioners were all unemployed, the court decided to let them off and impose cost if another case came up in a similar matter. It is natural for aspirants who miss out to raise such issues, but these campaigns often create misconceptions about the system. The KAT had also dismissed these allegations,” said a PSC official.
