HYDERABAD: A division bench of the High Court has directed the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) not to finalise the process of its ongoing recruitment of agriculture officers and agriculture extension officers in the state.
The bench, comprising justices Nooty Ramamohana Rao and Anis, passed this interim direction on Tuesday while hearing a petition filed by B Mallesh who challenged the procedure.
While allowing the written test scheduled to be held on October 17 to go unhindered, the bench, however, stayed all further process that is to follow the written test. The authorities should prepare a merit list and not make it public and the same should be furnished to the court in a sealed cover, the bench said.
According to the petitioners’ counsel J Sudheer, the aggrieved aspirants completed BSc (Agri) courses and several of them are working in the agriculture department as agricultural officers on contract basis. Earlier, there was a practice of giving weightage to such internal candidates. However, this was done away with by TSPSC and, as a result, persons working as agriculture officers for the last 10 years are now forced to get themselves familiar with the academic subject. It would be impossible for them to compete with fresh graduates, the counsel said and submitted that when these in-service candidates approached the AP Administrative Tribunal seeking a stay of TSPSC’s ongoing recruitment process, the tribunal refused to intervene. The aggrieved aspirants then moved the High Court.