REPUBLICA, June 27: KATHMANDU, June 26The Supreme Court on Wednesday deferred the hearing on a writ petition that challenges the parliament's state affairs committee's (SAC) directive to the Public Service Commission (PSC) to halt the process of recruiting 9161 staffers at the local units. The court said it had yet to notify the SAC, which has been made a defendant by the petitioner, regarding the petition.

The bench of justices Hari Krishna Karki and Ananda Mohan Bhattarai has summoned the SAC for a hearing on Sunday. Claiming that the directive issued by the SAC to halt the recruitment is illegal, advocate Rajaram Ghimire sought the apex court order to annul the directive. The apex court has scheduled the hearing on the petition along with other petitions related to the PSC vacancies filed by advocates Jagdev Chaudhary, Bikash Thakur, and Janak Bahadur Budha for Sunday. The PSC had announced 9161 vacancies at 515 local units on May 29. Nearly 400,000 people have already applied for the jobs by Wednesday. The vacancy announcement has stirred controversy over allegations that seats were not properly allocated among the various communities and other groups.

Petitioner Ghimire citing Section 242 and 243 of the Constitution has argued that parliamentary committees do not have the authority to issue instructions to the constitutional bodies. The secretariat of the federal parliament, the SAC, the House of Representatives, the Ministry of General Administration and the Public Service Commission (PSC) have been named as defendants in the petition seeking annulment of SAC's June 11 directive to the PSC.

 
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