'Public Service Commission Has No Power To Relax Recruitment Norms' : Jharkhand High Court Quashes Civil Service Exams Result

A Single Bench of Justice Sanjay Kumar Dwivedi quashed the result upon noting that the merit list was not prepared by the JPSC by following the criteria of minimum qualifying marks in each paper.

"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," the judge observed.

"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 added.

The Petitioners' contention was that the action of the JPSC in adding the total marks obtained by the candidates and not the minimum qualifying marks in each paper and the marks of Paper-I of General Hindi and General English while preparing the merit list is illegal

It was stated that the purpose of this paper is merely to test the working minimum working knowledge of the persons and not their merit otherwise.

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 forthwith.

The High Court has also ordered the State Government to take appropriate action upon the Commission by fixing accountability and by taking appropriate legal action so that such illegality may not occur in the future and confidence of people upon the Commission may prevail.

The development comes in a batch of Petitions challenging the final appointment cum result of 6^th Combined Civil Services Examination, 2016.

The Court allowed 5 (out of 15) writ petitions by quashing the final result of the Civil Services Examination. Consequently, appointment of 326 successful candidates, who were in service since June 2020, have been set aside.

"The appointment to any public post must be absolutely transparent and fair and it must be in accordance with the prescribed procedure. Even ad-hoc appointment should not be encouraged as far as possible and should be adhered to only when public exigency required and appointment in accordance with the prescribed procedure would take a fairly long time and non-filling of the post would be against the public interest. Thus, Article 16 of the Constitution of India has been violated. If appointment is made without following the rules, the same being a nullity the question of confirmation of an employee upon the expiry of the purported period of probation would not arise", the Court observed.

"There is no doubt that after appearance in the examination, the candidates are not allowed to challenge the criteria as argued by the learned counsel appearing on behalf of the JPSC, State and successful candidates. However, it is also well settled that a candidate by agreeing to participate in selection process only accepts the prescribed procedure and not the illegality in it. In a situation where a candidate alleges misconstruction of statutory rule and discriminating consequences arises therefrom, the same cannot be condoned merely because a candidate has partaken in it. The constitutional scheme is required to be followed",

Case Title: Rahul Kumar & Ors. v. State of Jharkhand

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