RANCHI: On Tuesday, Jharkhand High Court, quashed the merit list of the 6th Combined Civil service Examination, 2016 which was conducted by the Jharkhand Public Services Commission to recruit 326 posts in the state.
The judgement was pronounced by Justice Sanjay Kumar Dwivedi of Jharkhand High Court stating that the merit list was not prepared by the commission following the criteria of minimum qualifying to each paper.
While Justice Dwivedi also observed that “There is no doubt, the Commission is master of its working and the Courts normally are not entitled to question the mechanism of selection. But at the same time, if the illegality has been brought to the knowledge of the Court, the same cannot be ignored and the Court is bound to interfere into this”.
“The Public Service Commission have no power to relax the recruitment norms. In the case in hand, the JPSC deviated from the norms prescribed in the advertisement”, the court said.
The JPSC had admitted that marks of Paper-I were added in the merit list of the mains examination, and that minimum qualifying marks of each paper were not taken into consideration and only total marks were considered for preparing the merit list.
Taking exception to this, the Court observed that JPSC does not have the power to relax the recruitment norms.
It has therefore, directed JPSC to prepare a fresh merit list within 8 weeks, considering the minimum qualifying marks in each paper, and recommend the same to the Jharkhand Government within 4 weeks thereafter.
The competent authority of the State has been directed to issue appointment letters in favour of the successful candidates based upon the fresh merit list of immediately.