- (1.) ALL these writ petitions have been filed by petitioners, who are widows, challenging validity of Rule 16 of the Rajasthan Vidhyalay Sahayak Subordinate Service Rules, 2015 (for short, 'the Rules of 2015') read with Column -4 of Schedule -I thereof, in so far as they prescribe minimum experience of one year's working as eligibility for recruitment to the post of Vidhyalay Sahayak and Rule 25 of the said Rules, which provides for weightage of 15 marks on the basis of experience.
(2.) LEARNED counsel for petitioners submitted that experience defined in Rule 2(j) of the Rules of 2015, need not necessarily of teaching as it includes both academic/non -academic work. Rule 10 of the Rules of 2015 provides that reservation of vacancies for women candidates shall be 30% category wise in direct recruitment, out of which 8% shall be for widows and 2% for divorcee women candidates. Rule 15 of the Rules of 2015, which contains provision regarding age, in its Clause (ix) provides that there shall be no upper age limit in the case of widow and divorcee women. Rule 16 provides that a candidate for direct recruitment to the post enumerated in Schedule -I, shall possess qualifications and experience given in column 4 of the Schedule -I. It is argued that the State Government in the prescription made under different Service Rules has provided for relaxation in regard to requirement of experience for widows. Reference, in particular, is made to proviso to Rule 11 of the Rajasthan Education Subordinate Service Rules, 1971, which stipulates that the widow and divorcee women will be given relaxation in qualification of S.T.C. or B.Ed., as case may be, for the post of Teacher or Senior Teacher, if they are otherwise eligible and furnish an undertaking to the effect that they shall acquire qualification of S.T.C. or B.Ed., as may be relevant, within a period of three years. Also relied is Rule 266A of the Rajasthan Panchayati Raj Rules, 1996, which provides that notwithstanding anything contained in these Rules, the widow/divorcee women, who have been given appointment on the pot of teacher, after relaxing required education qualification of B.S.T.C./B.Ed., under the erstwhile proviso to Rule 266, shall be regularized from the date they acquire the requisite educational qualification. Learned counsel for petitioners further argued that the State Government have, by issuing notification inviting applications for appointment on the post of Vidhyalay Sahayak, now sought to make recruitment on 30522 posts of Vidhyalay Sahayak and 8% thereof, which would be roughly 2441 posts, are reserved for widows. According to Rule 10 of the Rules of 2015, in the event of non -availability of the eligible and suitable widow and divorcee women candidates in a particular year, the vacancies so reserved for widow and divorcee women candidates shall be filled in by other women candidates and in the event of non -availability of eligible and suitable women candidates, the vacancies so reserved for them shall be filled up by male candidates and such vacancies shall not be carried forward to the subsequent year.
(3.) LEARNED counsel for petitioners argued that the State Government have come out with an ambitious scheme of making appointment on so large number of posts after a long time and if the petitioners, who are all widows due to unfortunate circumstances of life, are deprived of right to consideration for appointment against the posts meant for widows, for the reason of prescription of experience of one year, they would face grave hardship. Reference is made to Rule 41 of the Rules of 2015, which provides that in exceptional cases, where the Administrative Department of Government is satisfied that operation of the rule relating to age or regarding requirement of experience for recruitment, causes undue hardship in any particular case, the Government may relax the provisions of the Rules thereabout.;