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| HC allows 13 petitions challenging KAS selection | | ‘Directs PSC to pay Rs.1.30 lakh as cost to the petitioners | |
Jammu, Nov 10
Justice YP Nargotra of J&K High Court in a landmark judgment today allowed all the 13 writ petitions challenging the selection for the main examination of KAS and also directed PSC to pay Rs.1.30 lakh as cost to the petitioners @ Rs 10,000 in each petition.
In his 60 page judgment Justice Nargotra while allowing the writ petitions directed PSC to delete the questions of each paper of A series and their corresponding questions “B”, “C” and “D” series and distribute these marks pro-rata to remaining question of the papers and separately redraw the merit of all the unselected candidates for the main examination in respect of compulsory paper of General studies and also redraw the merit of all the unselected candidates for the main examination as per the direction in respect of 10 optional subjects. Separately redraw a combined merit list of such candidates who have approached in the compulsory paper of General Studies and optional subjects-papers as already directed, also to redraw a combined merit of compulsory paper of those candidates in whose optional subjects-papers there was no discrepancy i.e.12 remaining optional subjects, which include the subject papers of Animal Husbandry, Botany, Indian-History and Physics and who have not been short listed.
Court further directed PSC to conduct the special main examination of all such candidates whose combined redrawn merit is equal to or more than the merit of last short listed candidate, in accordance with the procedure prescribed by the Examination Rules and complete the whole exercise within a period of six weeks.
In the approved for reporting judgment Justice Nargotra observed that it is very unfortunate that the candidates, who were competing to get employment in the coveted services of the state, after having put in so many years in studies, have to litigate for their lawful rights, denial of which emanates from the lack of expertise in conducting the examination on the part of PSC, a premier and constitutional examination conducting body of the State. According to the commission, the spelling mistakes, which existed in the papers, crept in due to the printing error, as the job was left to the printer itself for maintaining the secrecy is not tenable. The casual approach, which may be called euphemistically over-cautious approach; the petitioners have been forced to take resort to the litigation. Court is sure that this case will serve as an eye-opener for the PSC and in future no such thing will be allowed to happen and all the necessary steps for improving the system shall be taken.
Showing its displeasure over the manner in which two members of the Commission filed their replies clearly indicate that all was not well in the Commission, the Justice opined adding that in an institution decision are required to be taken by a group of persons in position on the basis of majority opinion and if during the decision making process some member expresses is dissent or reservation, the same gets obliterated when ultimately final decision is taken. Being bound to such a decision no member of the group is entitled to publically criticize the decision on the strength of his personal views.
The dispute in this batch of writ petitions relates to the combined services (preliminary) examination, 2005, (KAS) conducted by PSC for short-listing candidates for the main examination for making selection in respect of 122 posts in combined services of the J&K state.
Out of 17,116 candidates who applied, only 15,293 candidates appeared and large number complaints made by the candidates related to mistakes/errors in the question papers. The Commission unanimously decided that the reported questions, as were admittedly wrong would be deleted and the marks of such deleted questions would be added pro-rata to rest of the questions. While deciding about the modus operandi to deal with the wrong questions, the commission kept in view the manner in which such like situation was being dealt with by other examination conducting bodies like UPSC and deleted such questions from the question papers which according to it were admittedly wrong or had major printing errors. The marks excluded questions were added to the remaining questions and finally approved the result on July 12, 2005 and declared and notified it on the same date where under the private respondents were declared qualified for the main examination, where as the petitioners who could not find birth in the select-list filed the present writ petitions.
Justice Nargotra while deciding these 13 writ petitions further observed that there is no record available to show that the questions were actually corrected and observed that instead of canceling the examination, the commission in its own wisdom has preferred other way to deal with the issue and evolved the already described methodology. A candidate who had opted for any of the subjects, out of the subjects of which the question papers were having wrong questions, was to be pitted against a candidate in whose optional subject papers were no wrong questions/ mistakes.
Court further observed that pursuant to the directions of the Division Bench the PSC conducted the main examination of the candidates who stood short listed on the basis of preliminary examination under dispute. The Commission has also issued the list of those candidates who have been declared qualified in the main examination. However, interviews of all those qualified candidates are yet to be held by the Commission. In the meanwhile in another matter the Supreme Court vide its order August 28, 2006 stayed the appointments to be made pursuant to the said selection till the final decision of these writ petitions. In this back drop, the question of relief to be granted in these writ petitions to be considered. With these observations Court allowed all the 13 writ petitions.
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