Justice Made To Play Truant

Members of Nagaland Net Quallified Forum (NNQF) have been knocking on the doors of the court for years but to no avail. Some cases are lost not because the argument is weak, but because the doors of the court are shut before the argument is ever heard. That is what happened for years in one of Nagaland’s most stubborn public employment disputes, and that is what a recent judgment has now undone. In the long standing matter of contractual appointments in the Department of Higher Education, Government of Nagaland, a division bench of the Gauhati High Court, Kohima Bench, has passed a significant judgment quashing two earlier judgments by single judge benches. The 2026 judgment reopens a question that the courts had twice refused to examine. The facts, as recorded, are not complicated. The Nagaland Net Qualified Forum (NNQF) has, since 2019, been filing a large number of writ petitions challenging the constitutionality and legality of hundreds of contractual appointments to the posts of Assistant Professor and Librarian in the Department. The layers of illegality are described as scandalous. There were no open advertisements for most of these positions, so the appointments were made through the backdoor. Many among those appointed did not have the requisite qualification, notably the National Eligibility Test(NET), at the time of appointment, contrary to the UGC Regulations of 2010, updated in 2018, and contrary also to the State’s own Nagaland Higher Education Service Rules. Their services were extended as a matter of course each year, rendering contract employment virtually permanent. Earlier judgments in 2022 and 2025 refused to discuss the merit of these petitions at all. They dismissed them for lack of maintainability and lack of locus standi, meaning the petitions were held to be inappropriately filed and the petitioners to lack adequate interest to bring them to court. Whether the objections to the appointments were important, correct or persuasive was never considered. The 2026 judgment however, changes that. It holds that the approach of the single judge was not in conformity with the well settled constitutional principles of law, since the writ petitions concerned high constitutional principles of equality and could not simply be dismissed on technicalities. It rejects the State’s reliance on Regulation 13 of the UGC Regulations. That regulation allows contract appointments only when absolutely necessary and where the student-teacher ratio does not meet prescribed norms, and imposes other conditions too, including that the qualifications and selection procedure must be the same as for a regular teacher. The judgment observes, in effect, that the State had taken cognizance of only the first sentence of that regulation. The relief is concrete and imperishable. The contractual appointments stand declared violative of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution and of Regulation 13. No extension shall be given to the contract employees. The Government of Nagaland must either create adequate posts and requisition them to the NPSC, or appoint contract teachers strictly in accordance with Regulation 13, with due advertisement carried out. The strength of this judgment lies in its refusal to let procedure bury substance. Its caution lies elsewhere: the remedy arrives years late, after two contrary rulings, and still depends on executive compliance. Accountability, transparency and equity in public employment are tested at last not in the courtroom but in the appointment order. The judgment reaffirms people’s faith in the judiciary, but the real test is whether the backdoor now stays shut.