Gurugram: For candidates like Saurabh Verma, a Hindi teacher hopeful from Uttar Pradesh, the wait ended in a rejection letter. He passed the Haryana Public Service Commission’s Subject Knowledge Test for Assistant Professor in Hindi, cleared the cut-off marks, and found his roll number on the shortlist for document verification.
Then, on 7 January this year, the HPSC told him his candidature was cancelled. His National Eligibility Test score, at 148, fell short of a new benchmark of 160 that the Commission introduced only after he had already applied and appeared for the test.
Verma was not alone. Nearly 80 such candidates from across the country moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court, calling the mid-process rule change arbitrary and unconstitutional.
In an order announced in the court on 4 August, but made available by uploading on the website of the Punjab and Haryana High Court on 11 September, Justice Harpreet Singh Brar ruled in their favour.
The dispute traces back to HPSC’s advertisement of August 2024, inviting applications for 2,424 posts of Assistant Professor in the college cadre. The advertisement clearly stated that candidates from reserved categories, if they belonged to states other than Haryana, would compete for general category posts and be treated as general candidates.
No condition tied their NET score to the general category cut-off.
The petitioners applied, sat for the Subject Knowledge Test in October 2025, and cleared the cut-off marks fixed for the general category. Their names duly appeared on the shortlist for document verification in December.
But an announcement issued by the HPSC in June 2025 added a new twist. It said candidates from other states, as well as Haryana’s reserved category candidates competing on their own merit in the general pool, must now produce NET scorecards proving they had cleared the exam at par with general category cut-offs. Those who could not were struck off when results came out in January this year.
Their counsel argued this amounted to changing the rules after the game had already been played, relying on the Supreme Court’s Constitution Bench ruling in Tej Prakash Pathak vs Rajasthan High Court, which held that any benchmark for a recruitment process must be fixed before it begins, not after.
The court agreed. Justice Brar noted that neither the advertisement nor the Haryana Education (College Cadre) Group B Service Rules carried any such condition.
The NET, he observed, is only a threshold qualification, not a component of merit. Merit was to be judged solely through the Subject Knowledge Test and interview, as the advertisement had promised. Converting the NET score into a fresh eligibility bar midway through the process, the court said, was legally impermissible and violated Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution.
The court split the petitioners into two groups. Those who held NET certificates obtained under relaxed norms, including Haryana-domiciled reserved candidates competing in the general pool and out-of-state reserved candidates like Verma, will now have their candidature reconsidered.
If found eligible, they must get appointment letters within six weeks, along with notional benefits, though not back pay for the period they did not work.
A second group of Haryana candidates, who had sought to have relaxed-norm NET holders excluded altogether from the general category, got no relief.
The court held their claim ran contrary to its own findings.
Any other candidate with a pending grievance has been given four weeks to approach HPSC directly, with the Commission bound to pass a reasoned order.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
Also read: Why did Haryana’s brightest fail HPSC’s assistant professor exams? An evaluation or education debate