SHILLONG: The High Court of Meghalaya has pointed out several shortcomings in the report of the High Level Scrutiny Committee (HLSC) that examined the score sheets of candidates for recruitment of teachers in 2008-09.
The court on Monday conducted a day-long hearing on the education scam and it would continue on Tuesday.
The Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice Dinesh Maheshwari and Justice V.P Vaish, said it had perused the statement of marks to the candidates, who had appeared at two centres, Tura and Dadenggre, and noticed prima facie shortcomings in the report of HLSC.
The court pointed out that HLSC examined the cases of 60 candidates from Tura centre and 76 from Dadenggre whereas as many as 625 candidates were there in Tura and 408 in Dadenggre.
“We have put a glance at the statements of marks and have noticed a few factors in relation to the non-selected candidates. Correction fluid was used over their marks and there had been mistakes in sum total of marks too as seen at serial numbers 163 and 171 for Dadenggre Centre,” the order read.
As per the HLSC report, some of the candidates were taken as “tainted candidates” whose marks were tampered with and the others whose marks were not tampered with were considered as “non-tainted”.
Earlier, following the apex court order, the High Court had directed the advocate general appearing for the State to produce the copy of the HLSC report.
After the report was submitted before the court, it granted further time to the advocate general for filing synopsis on the status of the respective parties in this bunch of cases and also mini paper book containing relevant pleadings, documents, reports and orders.
Thereafter, three volumes of compilation were filed as also the synopsis.
On May 5, at the request of the counsels appearing for the petitioners, the court permitted them to inspect the copies of the reports available with the advocate general in his office.
“In these matters involving a large number of candidates, where different questions have cropped up as regards the legality and sanctity of the selection process, we had made it clear that hearing of these matters would proceed from May 22 to be continued until conclusion,” the order said.
On Monday, the advocate general commenced the arguments by referring to the various orders passed by the Court in the past.
The advocate general proceeded to refer to the report made by HLSC constituted in compliance with the order passed by the court.
“We had enquired about the documents forming the basis of the comments and opinions of the Committee i.e., the documents which were purportedly examined by the Committee for making the report.
Advocate General prayed for time to complete his instructions and hence, we deferred consideration of these matters for second session sitting of the court on Monday,” the order said.
‘Intriguing’
In the second session sitting of the court, a strange state of affairs was projected before it.
V.K Jindal, counsel on behalf of CBI, submitted that the original records pertaining to the selection process in question were with CBI and the same were placed before the court by the inspector of CBI, Shillong.
“We found the position slightly intriguing as to how the documents remained with CBI when the division bench of this court had already modified the order regarding CBI inquiry and entrusted the task to HLSC to be constituted by the government,” the order said.
In this regard, it was submitted by the advocate general that the time for making the report by the Committee was extended by this court by its order dated May 27, 2013, after the Committee found that certain documents were lying with the CBI.
On further queries, the advocate general in the first place submitted that as per his instructions, the documents were returned to the CBI after the inquiry report.
On this statement, Court was compelled to pose further queries as to how the documents were at all returned to CBI if they were forming the basis of the report of the Committee and called upon the government to produce the returning memo, if any.
On this, the advocate general submitted that as per instructions, certified copies of the documents were available with the Committee and will be produced in the court shortly.
“We cannot help putting on record our dissatisfaction that the department has not chosen to furnish concrete and specific instructions in the matter and the entire record is not kept available before the Court at the time of hearing,” the court said.
The court had to extend its sitting because the record expected from the government, which had formed the basis of the inquiry report, reached before the court only at 4.40 pm.
The order added that the court expected the Committee to review the records relating to the candidature of the selected candidates as also non-selected candidates.
“Prima facie we are also of the view that looking at the nature of allegations and questions posed, the Committee was expected to thoroughly scrutinise the entire record and to reach to its specific conclusion in relation to the entire selection process,” the order stated.
