HC allows univ recruitment, reserves 8 posts pending regularisation review

Dehradun: A division bench of Uttarakhand high court, comprising Chief Justice Manoj Kumar Gupta and Justice Subhash Upadhyay, on Friday disposed of a petition filed by Dr Sakshi Tewari and other assistant professors of Soban Singh Jeena University (SSJU), striking a balance between the varsity's ongoing recruitment needs and the petitioners' pending claims for regularisation.The petition arose following a university advertisement dated Feb 10, 2026, to fill multiple assistant professor positions across disciplines, including commerce, sociology, physics, psychology and geography. The petitioners contended that this recruitment could undermine their claimed entitlement to regularisation. The court allowed SSJU to proceed with recruitment but directed that eight advertised posts remain unfilled until the committee constituted under the university's Dec 31, 2025, order reviews the petitioners' regularisation cases. The petitioners highlighted that their initial appointments were contractual with Kumaon University (KU) and that they had cleared the relevant recruitment processes before engagement. After SSJU was formed, these KU employees were moved here. They claimed continuous service without interruption and noted that several senior contractual employees had been regularised by KU's executive council in 2018 under the Daily Wage, Work-Charge, Contract, Fixed-Pay, Part-Time and Ad-hoc Employees Regularisation Rules, 2013. During the proceedings, a 2024 high court decision was cited, which modified the 2013 Rules to allow only those completing 10 years of service after Dec 2018 to be considered for regularisation, effectively limiting the earlier five-year provision to cases before that date. The petitioners also challenged Clause 4(1) of the 2013 Rules, as amended in 2025, arguing that the amendment violated the spirit of the 2024 judgment.While KU's counsel said the university had long adopted the Regularisation Rules, SSJU's counsel, CS Rawat, clarified that SSJU had not formally adopted them. The petitioners relied on an office order of Dec 31, 2025, which constituted a six-member committee, chaired by professor PS Bisht, to consider the regularisation of contractual and ad-hoc employees. On Feb 27, the bench observed that filling all advertised posts immediately could complicate pending regularisation claims. SSJU's counsel acknowledged a shortage of teaching staff and requested permission to recruit while leaving eight positions vacant to safeguard the petitioners' interests.