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Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court has ruled that degrees obtained through distance education study centres operating outside a university’s home state are not valid qualifications for government jobs, dealing a blow to candidates who had enrolled with an Andhra Pradesh university through its centres located in Telangana.

The court held that if a university is set up under the laws of one state, it cannot run classes or study centres in another state, and any degree obtained through such centres cannot be used to apply for government posts.

A Division Bench of Chief Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh and Justice GM Mohiuddin upheld the rejection of several candidates who had applied for the post of librarian under a 2022 Telangana Public Service Commission (TGPSC) notification, but had obtained their Masters in Library Science (MLiSc) through distance mode from Acharya Nagarjuna University, whose jurisdiction is limited to Guntur and Prakasam districts of Andhra Pradesh, via study centres located in Telangana.

The court relied on a 2013 public notice issued by the University Grants Commission (UGC), which clearly states that a university set up under a state law can function only within that state’s boundaries and cannot extend its operations beyond it.

The candidates had cleared the selection process and were included in the provisional selection list in September 2024, but their degrees were rejected upon certificate verification. The TGPSC had turned them away in August 2024, finding that their degrees were obtained through study centres situated outside the university’s permitted territory.

The candidates had then approached a single judge of the High Court, arguing that similar degrees had been accepted in earlier recruitments in 2017 and that some employees had even received promotions on that basis. The judge had ruled in their favour, directing authorities to consider their candidature on merit.

However, the division bench overturned that ruling, saying that past irregularities cannot be used to justify fresh ones. The court made clear that just because someone may have wrongly benefited from such a degree in the past, that does not give others the right to the same benefit.

The bench also rejected the argument that provisions of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, the law that bifurcated the two states in 2014, allowed such study centres to continue operating in Telangana. The court said those transitional provisions dealt with a separate matter entirely and could not override UGC regulations on territorial jurisdiction.

With the division bench setting aside the single judge’s order, the TGPSC and appointing authorities are now free to proceed with recruitment to the 71 notified librarian posts – 40 under the Commissioner of Intermediate Education and 31 under the Commissioner of Technical Education – strictly in accordance with the law.