New Delhi, July 15 -- The Supreme Court on Monday quashed the recruitment process for appointing 1,091 assistant professors and 67 librarians in Punjab's government degree colleges, holding that the selection was not just arbitrary but also appeared driven by "narrow political gains" aimed at garnering electoral advantage.

In a stinging indictment of the recruitment exercise carried out by the then Congress-led government in the run-up to the 2022 Punjab assembly polls, a bench of justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and K Vinod Chandran said the process undermined fairness and disregarded statutory norms.

"The entire process is arbitrary and was followed not in the interest of the State or for the cause of higher education but for narrow politica...