The error was the State's. Why should candidates pay for the delay?
This article presents one side's argument. It is not legal advice. Please ask your own advocate about your case.
The exam was held in January 2019. The lists came in 2020. A candidate who was wrongly left out then is still waiting in October 2026.
She made no mistake. So whose mistake was it?
The argument is simple. Had reservation been applied correctly in 2020, these candidates would have been teaching for six years. The delay began with the State's error, and the Supreme Court has said before that the price of such delay cannot be recovered from candidates. The full sequence of events is in the timeline article.
The error, in the State's own words
- The complaint was that meritorious reserved-category candidates were kept on reserved seats instead of being counted in the unreserved (open) category.
- The State admitted that reservation was applied wrongly. In May 2022 it said on affidavit that horizontal and vertical reservation had been applied in the wrong order.
- To correct this, on 5 January 2022 it issued a list of 6,800 reserved candidates.
- Both benches of the High Court found the 2020 list defective: the Single Judge on 13 March 2023, and the Division Bench on 13 August 2024.
How one error became six years
| Date | What happened | Time elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| October and November 2020 | 67,867 appointments on the defective list | Start |
| 5 January 2022 | The State issued the 6800 list | 14 months |
| 27 January 2022 | The High Court stayed it: it went beyond the 69,000 advertised posts | — |
| 13 March 2023 | The Single Judge quashed the list and ordered revision | 2 years 4 months |
| 13 August 2024 | The Division Bench ordered a fresh list within 3 months | 3 years 9 months |
| 9 September 2024 | The Supreme Court halted the process of preparing a fresh list | — |
| 19 May 2026 | The State offered to appoint candidates who come into the revised list | 5 years 6 months |
| October 2026 | Hearing still going on | About 6 years |
The State's first correction, the 6800 list, did not survive because it added posts beyond those advertised, which the law does not allow. The stay of January 2022 was later upheld. So the fault does not lie with the courts. The root of the delay is the original error of 2020.
For B.Ed. candidates this delay had a further cost. They were still waiting when, on 11 August 2023, the law on B.Ed. changed. There is a separate article on this: Same exam, same degree, different outcome.
The "six years" figure does not apply to every candidate. Some candidates in the 2026 list were selected earlier and did not join.
What the Supreme Court has said about such delay
State of U.P. v. Neeraj Kumar Pandey (29 January 2025, SLP(C) Diary No. 18516/2019; J. Datta and J. Manmohan), para 11. This too was a teacher recruitment in Uttar Pradesh:
"the delay cannot be attributed to the successful candidates. The blame for the delay has to be squarely placed on the State."
"It would defy reason and logic if claims of candidates who have secured marks, more than the candidates who have already been appointed, are spurned for no better reason than that there has been delay in the process."
Other judgments:
- P. Mahendran v. State of Karnataka ((1990) 1 SCC 411): "If there had been no interim orders, the selected candidates would have been appointed much before the amendment of Rules". Their right "could not be defeated by subsequent amendment".
- Rajesh Kumar v. State of Bihar ((2013) 4 SCC 690), para 19: appointment "shall be offered" to candidates who come into the corrected merit list. Those already appointed were retained.
- Gaurav Pradhan v. State of Rajasthan ((2018) 11 SCC 352), paras 48 and 49: wrongly excluded candidates were appointed, with additional posts where needed, and without removing anyone.
- Tej Prakash Pathak (Constitution Bench, 2024 INSC 847), para 41: the State "cannot arbitrarily deny appointment to a selected candidate". The burden of giving reasons is on the State.
What correcting the error would mean
Candidates are asking for:
- A corrected list.
- Appointment against existing vacancies (these include the 1,133 vacant ST posts and posts on which selected candidates did not join), or against additional posts.
- That no serving teacher be removed. This is also the State's own declared position.
- Seniority from the date on which their batch was appointed, as in Balwant Singh Narwal (2008) and C. Jayachandran (2020).
These are demands. Whether the Court accepts them is not yet decided.
The other side
- In Neeraj Kumar Pandey relief went only to candidates who had already won in the High Court.
- A selected candidate has "no indefeasible right" to appointment (Tej Prakash Pathak, para 41).
- The stay of January 2022 was correct, because the 6800 list went beyond the advertised posts. So this argument is not against the courts.
No court has found fraud in this recruitment. The State has admitted one error, and this article is about that error.