New Delhi, Oct. 31 -- The Supreme Court has questioned the changing political positions of successive Karnataka governments in a 15-year-old recruitment scandal, observing that the state's shifting stances, depending on the "hues and colours" of changing political times, had left the aspirations of thousands of jobseekers in limbo while attempting to protect appointments flowing from a selection process tainted by "rampant corruption and blatant nepotism". Striking down a 2022 Karnataka law that sought to validate the recruitment of 362 gazetted probationers, a bench of justices JB Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran said the legislation was an attempt to nullify judgments of the Karnataka high court and the Supreme Court in 2018, which had upheld the cancellation of the entire selection process. The bench underlined that the legislature could not sit in appeal over judicial decisions and undo them through a law. "What comes to fore is an attempt by an unconnected individual to stultify a valid challenge to the notification," said the court in its Thursday judgment, expressing "a little bit of surprise and a lot more alarm" at the manner in which the Karnataka high court had subsequently dealt with challenges to the legislation. The judgment, authored by justice Chandran, was particularly critical of the state's change of position on the recruitment. While the government had earlier defended the cancellation of the selection process after a CID investigation exposed widespread irregularities, it subsequently enacted the Karnataka Civil Services (Validation of Selection and Appointment of 2011 Batch Gazetted Probationers) Act, 2022, to revive the appointments. "It is the shifting stances of the State, depending on the hues and colours in the changing times, we criticised at the outset," lamented the bench. To be sure, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in power in Karnataka when the 2022 validation law was passed. During the latest hearing in the top court, senior counsel Kapil Sibal, representing the current state government led by Congress, submitted that the legislation cannot at all be supported....