Punjab Invented a Rule to Deny Teacher Appointments; HC Calls It ‘Total Non-Application of Mind’

Punjab Head Teacher Recruitment High Court Order: In a September 7 ruling on the Punjab Head Teacher recruitment High Court order, Justice Kuldeep Tiwari found the state invented a non-existent rule to block waiting-list appointments, calling it “draconian.”

North Desk Correspondent

Chandigarh, September 7

For over 1,500 candidates who cleared a 2019 recruitment exam for Head Teacher and Centre Head Teacher posts in Punjab’s elementary education department, the wait for appointment turned into a five-year legal battle: one that exposed a government flip-flopping on its own written orders and citing a rule that, by its own admission, never existed.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court, in a judgment pronounced on September 7, 2026, has quashed the state’s 2021 decision to shut down the selection process, calling it “draconian” and directing that appointments be issued within two months.

Punjab Head Teacher Recruitment High Court Order: How it started

The Department of Education (Elementary Education), Punjab, advertised 1,558 Head Teacher (HT) and 375 Centre Head Teacher (CHT) posts on March 8, 2019. Written exams were held in July 2019, results declared in August 2019, and selection proceeded in phases — complicated early on by disputes over reserved-category candidates being pushed into the general category on merit, which triggered separate litigation and stalled the process until a Single Judge cleared the way in December 2020.

By mid-2021, the department was in its third and final phase, trying to fill the residual vacancies — 35 CHT posts and a matching set of HT posts — from the waiting list.

The flip-flop

Punjab Head Teacher Recruitment High Court Order: On July 3, 2021, the department called 16 HT and 19 CHT waiting-list candidates for a Zoom meeting to choose their posting stations, warning that skipping the meeting would make them ineligible. All the petitioners attended.

Five days later, on July 8, 2021, the department wrote to every District Education Officer in Punjab directing them to immediately issue appointment letters to these candidates.

The very next day — July 9, 2021 — the department reversed itself completely, telling the same DEOs not to issue any of those letters, citing unspecified “legal complications.”

Then, on August 18, 2021, it formally closed the entire recruitment, asserting that since “two years” had passed since the process began, appointing any more candidates from the waiting list would violate government rules.

The rule that didn’t exist

Punjab Head Teacher Recruitment High Court Order: The petitioners, backed by senior advocate Vikas Chatrath, argued there was no legal basis for a two-year cutoff, pointing to precedent where Punjab recruitment drives had run past three years without incident.

A coordinate bench of the High Court, hearing an earlier round of litigation in February 2022, directed the state to place on record every instruction governing how long a waiting list remains valid. The department’s response, filed via affidavit in February 2023, admitted that a 1957 instruction capping waiting-list validity at six months had itself been withdrawn in 2000, and that “there is no instructions (sic) regarding validity of waiting list at present.”

In other words: the government shut down a recruitment process — and the careers of 35 waiting-list candidates — citing a rule that had not existed for over two decades.

The court’s verdict

Justice Kuldeep Tiwari, delivering the judgment, held that the department’s decision “does not… [have] any discernible legal basis” and that “mere efflux of time, by itself, cannot constitute a valid ground to deprive the candidates of their rightful due.”

The court leaned on the Apex Court’s ruling in Shankarsan Dash casethat while a place on a waiting list doesn’t guarantee appointment, the state cannot act arbitrarily in denying it — and on the Supreme Court’s more recent Tej Prakash Pathakwhich held that “placement in the select list gives no indefeasible right to appointment… [but] the State cannot arbitrarily deny appointment to a person within the zone of consideration.”

The state’s defence — that no formal appointment letters had been issued, so no enforceable right existed — was rejected. The court noted the department itself had ordered those letters issued on July 8, then blocked them a day later “on a flimsy and vague ground, which has no legal validation.”

The order

The High Court set aside both the July 9 and August 18, 2021 communications and directed:

• All petitioners on the waiting list, who were cleared for appointment letters under the July 9, 2021 communication (16 HT + 19 CHT posts), be issued appointment letters strictly by merit.
• The department may create supernumerary posts if sanctioned vacancies are unavailable.
• Appointments will take effect prospectively.
• The entire exercise must be completed within two months of receiving a certified copy of the order.

The case was heard as three connected petitions filed by Balkar Ram, Sandeep Kaur, and Anoop Kaur, respectively, and others.

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