The Gauhati High Court Kohima Bench quashed the appointment of 163 police constables recruited by the Nagaland government between January 2018 and September 2020. The court’s ruling follows a comparable ruling last week that invalidated the appointment of 935 constables. The ruling was rendered by a bench of one judge, annulling the appointments that were made without following the correct processes for hiring or posting job advertisements. The appointments were ruled to be unlawful by the court under Articles 14 and 16 of the Indian Constitution.
The petitioners, young indigenous people without jobs, claimed that the state had disregarded traditional hiring procedures, depriving them of employment possibilities. The court declared in its ruling that due process was not followed and that the appointments were made arbitrarily. Respondent No. 74 was one of the respondents who was excluded from the decision, nonetheless. The court observed that this person had been nominated to fill a gap out of sympathy. In a separate case, the court also invalidated and set aside the appointments of forty Havildar Instructors, Home Guard members, Assistant Sub-Inspectors (ASI), and Under Belt Sub-Inspectors (UBSI).
