Controversial PSC vacancy advertisement gets go ahead for recruiting over 9000 staffs

KATHMANDU, June 2: The Supreme Court, against the directive issued by the State Affairs Committee of the parliament to annul the controversial vacancy announcement, Monday gave the nod to Public Service Commission (PSC) and Ministry of General Administration for the recruitment of 9161 staffs at the 515 local governments.

The parliamentary committee on June 11 had issued directives to the PSC and the ministry to withdraw the advertisement concluding that the announcement was against the spirit of constitution and the principles of inclusive representation of all communities and genders in the local bodies.

However, the ministry and the PSC had claimed that the vacancy announcement was totally in line with the constitution.

A bench of justices Hari Krishna Karki and Aaanda Mohan Bhattarai issued to order in response to the five different writ petitions challenging the staff recruitment lodged by advocates Jagdev Chaudhary, Bikash Thakur, Rajaram Ghimire, Janak Bahadur Budha and Kavita Basnet—who also claimed that the recruitment process undermined the principle of inclusion and federalism since the advertisement did not allocate seat quotas.

The vacancy advertisement also faced criticisms that it violated the Local Governance Operation Act and the right o internal competition among the temporary contract staff.

The lawmakers from both ruling and opposition parties and Province 2 government had alleged that the PSC vacancy announcement breaches the rights of the provincial PSCs to recruit staffers at local units.

The petitioners had also claimed the directive issued by the parliamentary committee was a breach of constitution and mockery of democracy, saying the Sections 242 and 243 of the Constitution forbids issuing of such directives.

Even though the regular deadline for applications expired on June 16, candidates could submit applications till July 2 on payment of double charges. The PSC had published the advertisement on May 29.

More than 400,000 applicants have registered their application in response to the vacancy announcement.

(Adopted from Republica)