Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Apr 4: High Court today decided bunch of petitions challenging selection of 2009 KAS batch officers and passed several directions to the Government.
After hearing battery of lawyers, Justice Janak Raj Kotwal observed, “the Public Service Commission seems to have shown disregard to the interest of the candidates who after their hard labour had succeeded in finding place in the select list but got defeated in the process of allocation of service to them”.
“The Commission, thus, lacked in making endeavour to adjust the meritorious candidates in a service other than police service for which they were not eligible and contradicted its own wisdom that if these candidates are not included in the select list, they will have to be replaced by candidates who had secured less marks. This has resulted into great injustice to the petitioners and similar other candidates and infracted their fundamental right to equality of opportunity relating to appointment in public employment under Article 15 of the Constitution”, High Court said.
“The petitions have strong merit and are allowed without, however, disturbing allocation of service made to any other candidate for the reason that selection is more than five years old and the appointed candidates by now would have completed their trainings and acquired right to benefits in the services allocated to them”, Justice Kotwal said and directed State to appoint the petitioners in the Jammu and Kashmir Accounts Service notionally from the date when other candidates selected in the same selection process were appointed and give them seniority from that date.
The respondent were further directed to take all administrative measures like creation of supernumerary post(s) for such period(s) as may be required and to do good by completing the entire exercise without any delay, preferably within eight weeks hereafter.
The Commission after completing the selection process had prepared and recommended to the Government a select list of 189 candidates equivalent to the number of vacancies which were referred for selection. All the four petitioners figured in this list at Serial Nos. 82, 144, 150 and 189 in order of their merit. The Commission also sent to the Government category-wise select lists showing also the options of preference given by and the service allocated to each candidate. All the petitioners were allocated Police Service. They, however, were not fulfilling the physical criteria for Police Service as provided under Rule 5 of the Rules of 2008 that govern the conduct of Combined Competitive Examination by the Commission as they were suffering short fall in height/chest.
In total there were eleven such candidates. Three of them, namely, Suresh Kumar Sharma, Muddasar Buddar Mir (petitioner), Showkat Ahmed Bhat were selected in open merit, five, namely, Mohd. Amin Bhat, Irshad Ahmed Sheikh, Hoshiar Chand (petitioner) and Sham Singh Rai (petitioner) and Shazia Akhter were selected under RBA category, Sunaina Bharti and Vijay Kumar (petitioner) under SC category and Pankaj Sasan under ALC category. The Commission neither allocated these candidates any service other than the Police Service nor excluded them from the select list on account of their not meeting the physical criteria for the Police Service. The Commission, as Communication dated 21.11.2011 shows, in its wisdom did not excludes these candidates from the select list taking the view that in that case they shall have to be replaced “by other candidates who had secured less marks than these candidates in the examination”.
“The Commission, however, does not seem to have made any endeavour to look into the possibility of allocating them any other service “in view of non-availability of any other service for them”. The Commission, therefore, took the decision of keeping their names in the select list, allocating Police Service to them and pointing out their short fall in height/chest in the select list. The Commission also nourished a hope that four of these candidates may fulfill the physical criteria for Police Service in view of SRO 154 of 2011 dated 19.05.2011, whereby the physical criteria provided for Police Service under the Rules of 2008 was rationalized during currency of the selection process”, High Court said.
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