Chandigarh, June 1 -- Observing that a cut-off date for acquiring essential qualifications is a well-established legal principle necessary to ensure certainty, uniformity and fairness in recruitment, the Punjab and Haryana high court dismissed a petition challenging a PSPCL recruitment condition requiring candidates to possess the prescribed qualification by the last date of submission of online applications.

Justice Harpreet Singh Brar held that the condition could not be termed arbitrary, unreasonable or violative of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. The court said recruitment processes would become open-ended and disorderly if eligibility timelines were not clearly demarcated and that the terms of an advertisement were binding e...