Madras HC orders status quo over plea for transparency in nurses recruitment
Chennai: A male nurse has approached the Madras high court, challenging a notification issued by the Medical Services Recruitment Board (MSRB), calling for the nurses from the list of selected candidates, to be appointed in the services of Department of Health and Family Welfare.
Justice R.Mahadevan before whom the petition filed by G. Udaya Kumar came up for hearing, ordered maintenance of status quo and posted to October 29, further hearing of the case.
Petitioner’s counsel Puhazh Gandhi submitted that on July 15, 2016 the MSRB published a list of 498 nurses and invited them to join duty pursuant to their qualifying examination conducted pursuant to a notification dated April 19, 2015.
The said list was captioned as “List of Provisionally selected candidates against not joined/resigned/un-authorised absent (left without notice) vacancies of nurses. Again on October 21, 2016, the MSRB issued a list of 182 captioned “List of provisionally selected candidates against not joined vacancies of nurses substitute List-II and appointed them. While that being so, the MSRB issued another notice dated September 12, 2018 calling 950 nurses to be appointed in the services of the department. No proper reason was given as to the selection criteria of such nurses, he added.
He said every year, there arises large number of vacancies and more than 40,000 nurses graduate every year. The authorities have a duty to conduct fair and impartial selection process every year or as and when the vacancy arises to give equal opportunity for every nurse who graduates each year. The authorities cannot fill up the vacancies till the last person was appointed pursuant to the examination conducted pursuant to the notification dated April 19, 2015. This action of the authorities amounts to negation of equal rights for those, who qualify every year and denying them equal opportunity which was violation of Article 21 and 14 of the Constitution of India, Puhazh Gandhi added.
