Court cannot act as expert in field of education: Supreme Court
India Today
The Supreme Court refused to act on educational matters in the case of eligibility criteria for teaching jobs in Jharkhand.
Supreme Court on Sunday said that the court is not responsible for taking decisions in the field of education and it should be left to the institutions to determine whether a candidate possesses the requisite qualifications or not. A bench of Justices M R Shah and B V Nagarathna said there cannot be any deviation from the educational qualifications mentioned in an advertisement of job.
"In the field of education, the court of law cannot act as an expert normally. Therefore, whether or not a student/candidate possesses the requisite qualifications should better be left to the educational institutions, more particularly, when the Expert Committee considers the matter," the bench said.
The matter grabbed the attention of the top court when the order challenging the Jharkhand High Court came in. The appeal was made in the selection process of postgraduate trained teachers in the high school of Jharkhand for different subjects under different categories. The top court said that as per the advertisement, a candidate must have postgraduate/bachelor degree in history.
"We have gone through degrees/certificates in the case of respective writ petitioners. It appears that the respective writ petitioners have obtained postgraduate degrees/bachelor degrees, as the case may be, in one of the branches of history, namely, Indian Ancient History, Indian Ancient History and Culture, Medieval/Modern History, Indian Ancient History, Culture and Archaeology.
"In our view, obtaining the degree in one of the branches of history cannot be said to be obtaining the degree in history as a whole.
