Punjab Pharmacy Officer Selection Stayed By HC Amid Cheating Racket Row

Punjab Pharmacy Officer Selection Stayed: Punjab & Haryana HC stays selection process for 454 Pharmacy Officer posts till Sept 17, amid a cheating racket probe and opposition demands for ministerial resignations.

North Desk Correspondent

Chandigarh, August 13

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has stayed the selection process for 454 Pharmacist (Pharmacy Officer) posts in Punjab’s Department of Health and Family Welfare till September 17, formalising a freeze that respondents in the case told the court was already in effect.

The order, passed by Justice Sandeep Moudgil, came in a writ petition filed by Keshav Kamboj and other candidates challenging the written examination held on July 19 — an exam that Punjab Police say was compromised by an organised, hi-tech, inter-state cheating racket.

Punjab Pharmacy Officer Selection: What the court actually ordered

Punjab Pharmacy Officer Selection: The August 10 order is the second in the case, and it builds directly on an earlier one. When the petition first came up on July 28, the court had already recorded that “further selection process would be subject to outcome of the present writ petition” — a conditional posture, not a formal stay.

The state counsel sought time to file a written statement, and the court ordered dasti notices to be issued to the respondents— understood to be Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) and its Vice-Chancellor, the exam-conducting authority — returnable August 10.

At the August 10 hearing, K.S. Dadwal, advocate for respondents, informed the court that the appointment process had “also been stalled” independent of any court direction, given the pendency of the petition. On that submission, Justice Moudgil converted the earlier conditional posture into an explicit stay: “the process of appointment to the posts of Pharmacist (Pharmacy Officer), pursuant to the advertisement dated 11.06.2026, shall remain stayed till the next date of hearing.” Both state counsel and counsel for BFUHS sought time to file replies, and the case was deferred to September 17.

Two things worth flagging for accuracy: first, this isn’t a case of the state fighting to protect the recruitment process and losing — BFUHS’s own counsel told the court the process was already halted, and the judge’s order essentially formalised that admission. Second, the court has not yet ruled on the substantive relief the petitioners are seeking — quashing of the exam itself and a fresh test. That question stays open till September 17.

The underlying petition

Punjab Pharmacy Officer Selection: Kamboj and the other petitioners moved the High Court seeking to quash the July 19 examination held by BFUHS for recruitment to 454 Pharmacist (Pharmacy Officer), Group-C posts, conducted pursuant to an advertisement dated June 11, 2026. They also sought quashing of all consequential steps — evaluation of answer sheets and preparation or declaration of results.

Their case rests on the argument that the examination stood “vitiated in its entirety” by the cheating racket, citing the Punjab Police claim of July 19 and FIR in July, and that allowing the process to continue would violate Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution — the right to equality and equality of opportunity in public employment.

The cheating racket that triggered it all

Punjab Pharmacy Officer Selection: Nearly 7,000 candidates sat for the July 19 exam across 25 centres in Faridkot, Kotkapura and Ferozepur. Punjab Police say they busted a sophisticated, inter-state racket operating during the test, arresting at least 35 people — including candidates and members of an 11-member gang — and seizing 27 battery-operated wireless cheating devices. Investigators allege candidates used hidden pen cameras to photograph the question paper and transmit it via WhatsApp to a handler based in Haryana, with answers relayed back through Bluetooth earpieces and other wireless devices. The racket is alleged to have charged candidates between ₹3.5 lakh and ₹13 lakh to guarantee passing marks.

The government’s defence

Punjab Pharmacy Officer Selection: Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains addressed the matter in the Assembly on August 3, during a debate on a censure motion over paper leaks nationally. His position has been consistent: this was not a paper leak but a technology-driven cheating operation that Punjab Police detected and dismantled the same day. He has repeatedly drawn that distinction — a leak implies the paper got out before the exam; this, he says, was real-time cheating caught in the act.

Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has gone further, asserting there has been no paper leak in Punjab in four and a half years of AAP government, and accusing the opposition of pushing “fake news” for political ends. The AAP’s broader response has been to credit its own police for busting the racket rather than concede any systemic failure in the examination process.

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The opposition’s charge

Punjab Pharmacy Officer Selection: BJP, Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal have jointly pressed the AAP government since July 19, demanding the resignations of Bains and Health Minister Balbir Singh. Their argument has folded this case into a wider pattern — BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla and Union Minister Ravneet Singh Bittu have cited it alongside alleged irregularities in the PSSSB Group-B exam (where an unusually high share of top rankers came from one district, prompting a Vigilance Bureau probe), the Excise Inspector exam, and the PPSC Naib Tehsildar exam, adding up to what they call six to seven paper-leak-style incidents under this government.

SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia has cited the cancelled Class 12 English board exam (Feb 2023) and the Punjab State TET (March 2023) as part of the same pattern, and has separately accused the CJP of double standards for not holding AAP accountable on the issue.

Reacting to the August 10 stay order once it became public on August 12–13, BJP MP Sambit Patra called it proof the government had misled the public by dismissing the episode as a “minor irregularity,” and asked why the exam wasn’t halted or re-conducted immediately if the government’s own account of a caught-in-progress racket was accurate. That is opposition framing of the court order, not language from the order itself — the order does not characterise the government’s conduct one way or the other; it simply freezes the appointment process pending adjudication.

Meanwhile, the stay holds until September 17, when Justice Moudgil is due to take up replies from the state and BFUHS and proceed on the substantive question — whether the July 19 exam should be quashed and a fresh test ordered. Until then, no appointments to the 454 posts can be made. The political argument over resignations and the “paper leak vs cheating racket” framing runs on a separate track and is unlikely to be resolved by the court’s timeline.

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