July 24, 2008	Thursday	Rajab 20, 1429

LARKANA, July 23: The Larkana circuit bench of the Sindh High Court on Wednesday gave two days to the Kandhkot-Kashmore EDO of education to file comments on a petition, accusing him of deleting two petitioners’ names from the final list of candidates who had passed a test for high school teacher’s jobs.

Noor Khan Bakhrani and Niaz Ahmed Khoso stated in the petition that they appeared in test for the jobs and were declared successful according to a list of 129 candidates prepared by the Sukkur branch of the Institute of Business Administration (IBA). A total of 267 candidates had appeared in the test conducted by IBA.

They said their names were placed on the list at No1 with highest marks of 66 and at No8 with 60 marks, they said. The advertisement had said that the candidates who secured 40 per cent marks would be selected but then the department changed the passing marks percentage to 60 per cent.

They said that the list of successful candidates was published on July 16 but it made no mention of petitioners. They learnt after meeting with director of IBA that their names had been deleted from the original list.

The petitioners accused the director of IBA and EDO of education of deleting their names without justification, which was also a violation of Article 4 and 25 of the Constitution.

They requested the court to direct the respondents to give them jobs on merit as per original list of successful candidates in which their names were listed at serial number 1 and 8.

Justice Ghulam Dastgir Shahani heard the petition in the presence of EDO Din Mohammed Solangi and representatives of director of IBA. The EDO sought two days to file comments, which the court granted him till July 25.

The representative of the director said in the comments filed in the court that the IBA tabulated and announced the result in light of a list provided by EDO in the form of a compact disk.

The first CD, which they received, had the seat numbers of both petitioners with 66 and 60 marks, respectively, but the second CD provided to them after about a week of the announcement of the result did not have the petitioners’ names, he said.

The petitioners did not possess BEd degree hence the IBA’s second list excluded their names, the EDO contended, adding that the IBA was not competent to declare whether the petitioners were eligible or ineligible for the job.

Inayat Morio, advocate for the petitioners, said that the names of only three successful candidates out of eight who had secured 60 and above marks were published in newspapers while the names of five others, including the petitioners who had secured top marks, had been deleted.

The court would hear the petition on July 25.