Supreme Court upholds appointment in CUSAT, insists on community rotation in appointments

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has ruled that communal rotation should be followed to fill the vacancy that occurs when a person resigns after getting an appointment to a reserved post. The next appointment should be given to the person who is entitled to it.

The fact that a candidate from the community of the employee who resigned is in the rank list cannot be seen as a right to appointment. Waiting list is not a source of recruitment. The court also clarified that the reservation and rotation rules should be strictly followed.

A bench of Justices Arvind Kumar and N.V. Anjaria made this clear while upholding the High Court verdict related to the appointment of an associate professor at Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT). The court clarified that the Scheduled Caste reservation was implemented by the first appointment and that a new vacancy arose after the employee resigned. The Scheduled Caste community cannot claim any more.

Anitha C Kumar, the first rank holder, was appointed to a vacancy reserved for the Scheduled Caste category in the Applied Chemistry Department. She resigned after a year after getting a job in another university. Since the rank list was valid for two years, T Radhika, the second rank holder from the Scheduled Caste category, claimed the position but was not given the job. CUSAT took the stand that the next round would be for the Latin Catholic or Anglo Indian category. After the High Court also accepted this stand, Radhika approached the Supreme Court.