Teesha –
The Jharkhand High Court quashed the merit list of the 6th Combined Civil service Examination, 2016 which was conducted by the State Public Service Commission (JPSC) to fill 326 positions.
A single Bench of Justice Sanjay Kumar Dwivedi quashed the result on the grounds that the merit list was not prepared by the JPSC by following the criteria of minimum qualifying marks in each paper.
The Court observed that “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 Petitioner’s apprised that the action of 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 was illegal.
The Petition further contended that the purpose of the paper was to merely test the minimum working knowledge of the persons and not their merit otherwise. JPSC admitted the claims.
The Court taking exception to this, observed that JPSC does not have the power to relax the recruitment norms. And thus the Court directed JPSC to prepare a fresh merit list within 8 weeks, as per the guidelines and recommend the same to the Jharkhand Government within 4 weeks thereafter.
The competent Authorities of the State have been directed to issue appointment letters in favour of the successful candidates based upon the fresh merit list.
