The Bihar State University Service Commission (BSUSC) has postponed interviews for Ancient Indian History and related subjects following a Patna High Court order. Legal challenges have questioned changes in eligibility criteria, marking patterns, and anomalies in appointments, delaying the recruitment process of assistant professors in Bihar’s universities yet again.
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PATNA: The Bihar State University Service Commission (BSUSC) had to cancel the interviews scheduled for January 15-16 for the subjects of Ancient Indian History, Archaeology, Culture, and Asian Studies. This decision came after an order from the Patna High Court, and the commission has postponed these interviews until further notice.
On January 3, the commission had released a list of 185 shortlisted candidates for interviews based on the reservation roster’s cut-off criteria. However, on January 10, the court raised questions about the process, leading to the commission issuing a cancellation notice on January 17.
The petitioners in the case questioned whether-
“The Commission, after commencement of the recruitment process, can change the eligibility criteria midway by allowing 11 additional subjects based on the report of three members expert committee dated January 1, 2024, in addition to three subjects.”
The recruitment advertisement, published on September 21, 2020, initially included only three subjects: Ancient Indian History & Culture, Ancient Indian History & Archaeology, and Ancient Indian & Asian Studies.
During the hearing, the commission’s counsel requested two weeks to justify that the addition of these subjects would not constitute a change in eligibility criteria midway through the process.
Meanwhile, the commission decided to halt the interviews for the disputed subjects.
The court has set the next hearing for January 27.
The BSUSC’s recruitment processes have often faced legal challenges in Bihar, frequently leading to prolonged delays. This case is no exception. Earlier in January, the commission had to revoke the appointment of a candidate in sociology after discrepancies in the process were raised by several candidates and confirmed to be accurate.
The dissatisfied candidates had even written to the Governor, Chief Minister, Education Minister, and other authorities, urging them to cancel the results.
In their petition, they also raised concerns about “the marks obtained for Ph.D., research, etc.” and highlighted inconsistencies in the evaluation process. Other petitions filed in the court similarly questioned the allocation of marks for research and Ph.D.
“There is also a pattern in the way marks for interview have been awarded, with those having high score in academics getting poor marks in interview to miss the bus, and that also needs to be looked into. The marks awarded in the interview are the prerogative of the experts, but there should not be a pattern,”
-said an aspirant.
For the single post in Rural Studies, the results were amended following a High Court order. Shashi Gupta, a backward class candidate in the unreserved category, was selected nearly two years after challenging the anomalies in the process.
The High Court’s single-judge bench of Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma had, in December 2022, stayed the appointment of assistant professors due to confusion regarding the reservation roster and the adjustment of backlog vacancies. This stay was lifted in April 2023.
BSUSC had initially advertised 4,638 assistant professor vacancies across 52 subjects on September 23, 2020, just before the Bihar state assembly elections. By the time the High Court halted the appointments, 461 candidates had already been appointed.
The Bihar legislature had passed the Bihar State University Service Commission Act in 2017, reinstating the commission’s authority over university recruitment, which had been dissolved in 2007. The commission was reconstituted in February 2019, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
However, despite increasing vacancies in the state’s universities, it has struggled to complete a single recruitment process successfully.
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