HC seeks Jamia reply after PIL claims religious bias in recruitments

New Delhi: Delhi High Court has sought the stand of Jamia Millia Islamia on a PIL alleging religious discrimination in the hiring of its non-teaching staff, outsourced to a private recruitment agency.A bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia on Wednesday issued a notice to the university on a PIL by an employee that claimed “that a disproportionately large number of such outsourced employees (720 out of 986) belong to a particular community, thereby giving rise to a strong inference of discriminatory practices in the recruitment process”.The plea by Ram Niwas Singh challenged a March 24 notification allowing these contractual employees hired through Everest Human Resource Consultants to continue as non-teaching staff, on the ground that the recruitment process was carried out in a discriminatory manner and disproportionately favoured Muslim candidates.Singh, through senior advocate Arun Bhardwaj, contended that being a centrally funded university, Jamia is constitutionally bound to follow principles of equality and non-discrimination while making appointments, even in cases involving outsourced staff. Challenging the notification, the plea said it “perpetuates an existing arrangement of outsourcing manpower without ensuring adherence to the constitutional mandate of fairness, transparency and equal opportunity”.The lawyer argued that Jamia can’t skirt such obligations by resorting to a private hiring agency and then claim it has no control over the process, where the end result is religious discrimination in matters of public employment, violating Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution of India, which guarantee equality before law and equal opportunity in matters of public employment.“The routing of recruitment through a private agency cannot dilute or defeat the constitutional obligations of fairness, transparency and non-discrimination in public employment,” the PIL said, adding that although the university claims minority status under Article 30 of the Constitution, such status does not confer an unfettered right to adopt recruitment practices that are arbitrary, exclusionary, or based solely on religion.Singh’s PIL argued that such disproportionate recruitment of persons from one religion “is not a mere coincidence, but indicative of a systemic bias, resulting in the exclusion of equally eligible candidates from other communities, thereby defeating the principle of equal opportunity.”.