Legal Newsdesk
Jammu Tawi, Sept 16: The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) today has allowed five candidates, who were first declared as successful in JKPSC's first result list and later ousted from the subsequently revised result list after midnight, to apply for J&K Combined Competitive (Mains) Examination, 2022 being conducted by the J&K Public Service Commission (JKPSC) on 27 November 2022.
The Jammu Bench of CAT presided over by Hon'ble Member (Judicial), Sh. Suresh Kumar Batra after hearing an Original Application O.A./1286/2022 filed by five candidates Amit Singh and others through their counsels Advocate Jattan Singh passed the order directing JKPSC to allow provisionally the applicants to apply for J&K Combined Competitive (Mains) Examination, 2022, for which the Commission has fixed 20.09.2022 as the last date for submitting applications for J&K Combined Competitive (Preliminary) Examination, 2022 by the successful candidates. However, the final result of the applicants would be subject to the outcome of this Original Application (O.A./1286/2022 -JAMMU)
The Addl Advocate General Rajesh Thapa and Advocate F A Nantoo appeared for the Respondents JK Public Service Commission and Higher Education Department.
The brief facts of the case is the JKPSC on 17.08.2022 declared the JKAS Preliminary Exam 2022 result and uploaded the same on the website of the JKPSC i.e. JKPSC.NIC.IN. The result was declared and uploaded on the respondent website and all the applicants including the petitioners were declared qualified. However, the JKPSC, later after midnight on 18.8.2022, withdrew the first result notification by rolling out a new result notification vide notification no. PSC/Exam/2022/19, wherein it was mentioned that due to certain inadvertent errors, the earlier notification no PSC/Exam/2022/19 dated 17.08.2022 stands withdrawn. This arbitrary roll-out of the subsequent notification by the respondents herein, ousted/dropped about 80 candidates, who had otherwise qualified for the JKAS Mains Exam and thereby added approximately 75 new candidates as qualified to apply and appear for the JKAS Mains Exam.
The Counsel for the applicants further submitted that this major change in the list of qualified candidates was only attributed to the phrase “inadvertent error” by the respondents. He also submitted that the respondents very cleverly removed the 1st result notification from their website. Also, it is submitted that no corrigendum or separate notice regarding the so-called was ever issued nor published anywhere by the respondents.
The Counsels for the respondents submitted that as soon as the result was published, it came to the notice of the commission that due to inadvertent human error, the data of one centre got mistakenly overlooked. This mistake was rectified within a few hours and the revised shortlist was published. It is submitted that the mistake has happened due to an inadvertent error without any deliberate intention or ill will and the revised list was notified with an intention to correct an apparent wrong. Once the result of the left-out candidates was corroborated, it turned out that they have higher merit than the applicants herein and some other candidates.
