Delhi HC questions eligibility interpretations, slams rejection of nursing post application

Qualified doctors and nurses should not be denied consideration for positions due to a narrow or restrictive interpretation of the prescribed eligibility criteria, the Delhi high court said while pulling up the recruiting panel.

A bench of Justices C Hari Shankar and Nivedita Anil Sharma said the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) adopted a legally unsustainable and unnecessarily myopic view as it heard its plea against a Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT)’s January 29 order in favour of a woman rejected for a nursing officer (allopathic) post advertised in January 2024.

The candidature of the woman, possessing a post-basic BSc nursing qualification, was rejected because she obtained registration after the prescribed cut-off date. The woman approached the tribunal, which allowed her application.

The CAT observed that the Delhi Nursing Council issued her a certificate registering her as a nurse in 2018, before the cut-off date. The SSC moved the high court challenging that order. It argued that the certificate issued in 2018 could not have been taken into consideration as it was issued before the candidate obtained the requisite essential BSc qualification prescribed in the advertisement.

The court dismissed SSC’s petition and reprimanded it for rejecting the candidature based on a narrow view. It asked SSC to abide by the CAT’s ruling in four weeks. “We feel that the SSC ought to have graciously accepted the order of the Tribunal instead of challenging it...,” the court said in a November 2 verdict, released four days later.

The court called doctors and nurses assets to society. “A professional doctor or nurse, who is actually qualified, should not be thrown out of consideration by adopting an unjustifiably restricted view of the prescribed qualifications.”