Cuttack, Aug. 13: A petition filed in Orissa High Court has challenged fixation of upper age limit while inviting applications for college lecturers by the Odisha Public Service Commission.

The commission has invited applications for the posts of lecturers in various disciplines of the Odisha Education Service (college branch) under the state higher education department.

The petition has alleged that fixing of upper age limit “is not in conformity with the practice and procedure adopted by Utkal University and National Eligibility Test conducted for lecturers”.

On June 26, the commission had issued an advertisement inviting applications for 281 posts of government college lecturers in 18 disciplines fixing 33 years as upper age limit as one of the eligibility conditions for applicants.

Sukanta Chandra Panigrahi, 41, who is working as a lecturer in physics at a private college in Bhadrak, filed the petition seeking the court’s intervention for modifying the age limit prescribed in the advertisement. The petition said the the commission had issued an advertisement for filling up posts of lecturers in government colleges of the state after a gap of 25 years.

“The division bench of Justice M.M. Das and Justice A.K. Rath, before which the petition came up on Monday, posted the matter to August 26 for hearing along with the reply of the state government and THE COMMISSION,” the petitioner’s counsel Pravat Ranjan Dash said.

“The court ordered for issue of notice through special messenger to the secretary, the commission, and directed the state counsel to obtain instructions from the government on the matter,” Dash said.

The petition said the National Eligibility Test conducted jointly by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and University Grants Commission for junior research fellowship and lectureship had no prescribed upper age limit.

Earlier, the petitioner had approached the State Administrative Tribunal. But the tribunal had refused to intervene in the matter. “We are of the considered view that it is the prerogative of the state government to fix the upper age limit required for a particular post and as such this tribunal need not interfere in such decision of the state authorities,” the tribunal’s bench of Justice N. Prusty (chairman) and S.N. Dash (member-administration) had observed, while disposing of the petition on July 17.