The Delhi High Court has asked Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) University to furnish details of posts for various staff, after a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) taken up on Wednesday flagged that a private agency, to which the varsity has outsourced the recruitment of non-teaching staff, is “recruiting those from one religion.”
The PIL, filed by Ram Niwas Singh, an employee at JMI, challenged a notification issued by the varsity on March 24 approving the continued engagement of 986 outsourced employees recruited through a firm — Everest Human Resource Consultants — as non-teaching staff. The petition submitted that a “disproportionately large number of such outsourced employees (720 out of 986) belong to a particular community,” while alleging discrimination.
Singh, alleging “systemic bias” resulting in the exclusion of equally eligible candidates from other communities, sought the court’s direction to JMI to undertake a fresh tendering process for the engagement of outsourced staff, ensuring that “selection is not influenced by religion.”
The matter was taken up before the bench of Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia, where senior advocate Arun Bhardwaj, representing Singh, argued that both the Jamia Millia Islamia Act, 1988, and the Constitution bar such discrimination, and that JMI was doing so indirectly by engaging these staffers through an outsourced agency. However, he clarified that he was not opposed to outsourcing per se, but to the fact that employees engaged through outsourcing belong to a specific community.
“Can you engage an agency to do what you can’t do directly,” Bhardwaj added, referring to JMI.
JMI’s counsel Pritish Sabharwal, however, countered Singh’s arguments. “If an agency hires from any community, it does not violate Article 16 (Equality of opportunity in matters of public employment) at all, because this is a secular state, everybody has a right…even in the high court there are contractual employees such as safai karamcharis…we cannot say they are from a particular religion or region and thus is liable to be set aside,” he argued.
Sabharwal further added that “if the other community applies, then the other community will (allege discrimination)…recruitment is purely on merits…”
While agreeing with JMI’s contentions, Chief Justice Upadhyaya orally remarked, addressing JMI’s counsel, “There is no dispute to these facts but then what is this? The agency which you appoint, has had 1,000 persons, of which 990 are of a particular denomination…Whether the outsourcing agency has to conform to the provisions of the Jamia Act? Funds come from you. Did you ask them (outsourcing agency) to exercise inclusivity? Did you have any such clause in your tender?”
The court further inquired whether the 986 posts were sanctioned posts, and sought details of the “nature of posts the university is having, sanctioned or non-sanctioned, persons engaged on daily wage basis and whether engagements made on contractual basis are for sanctioned posts or not.”
