Goa, July 15 -- The Supreme Court on Monday scrapped the recruitment process for 1,091 assistant professors and 67 librarians in Punjab government colleges, sharply criticising the exercise as arbitrary and politically motivated.

A bench comprising Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and K Vinod Chandran ruled that the recruitment process, initiated by the Congress-led Punjab government in 2021, violated statutory norms and appeared designed to secure electoral gains ahead of the 2022 assembly elections.

"The entire process is arbitrary and was not undertaken in the interest of the state or higher education, but for narrow political purposes," the court observed, adding that the state failed to justify its deviation from standard recruitment proc...