SC Asks JKPSC Not To Declare KAS Results 

SRINAGAR — The Supreme Court on Friday directed that J&KPSC not to declare result of KAS examination 2016 and asked the Jammu and Kashmir High Court to decide the case on merits.  

“Our Order dated 21.01.2019 passed in S.L.P.(C) No. 1493/2019 leaves no room for any ambiguity or doubt that though the selection process can be finalised no appointment will be made. What would require to be made clear is that if appointments are not permissible to be made, the declaration of the results would be a futile exercise and may give cause to unnecessary third party rights which we must avoid,” said a division bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta. Accordingly, the bench said, the result of the selection process shall not be declared. 

“We also make it clear that the High Court is free to decide the pending Public Interest Litigation and all connected cases both on maintainability and merits,” the top court said, adding, “We request the High Court to do so at the earliest, preferably within a period of four weeks from today.” The bench was hearing SLP filed by the aspirants—Owais Ashraf Shah and others. .

The examination was held from July 2 to  August 8 last year. 6427 candidates had appeared in the examination and 963 of them qualified for personality test and viva-voice. 

“We defer further consideration of the matter till clarification is sought either by Public Service Commission or by any aggrieved party from the Supreme Court as to whether in view of the pendency of Special Leave Petition this court can proceed to deal with the preliminary objection regarding maintainability of PIL,” said a division bench of Justice Ali Muhammad Magrey and Justice Sanjeev Kumar.

The PIL had commenced on 21 December last year on the representation of 83 applicants, alleging irregularities on account of alleged data corruption and huge human error in the digital marking adopted for evaluation of answer scripts in the Combined Competitive Examination held by the J&K Public Service Commission . On the same day (December 21), the Court also directed that till next date of hearing, there shall be stay of further selection process and the case was posted for further consideration on January 28.

The J&KPSC however approached the Supreme Court against the High Court order. On January 21, the Apex Court allowed the premier recruiting agency for gazetted posts to carry out further selection process in the KAS examination 2016 but barred it from making the appointment. 

In compliance to the high court’s notice, the J&KPSC filed a detailed reply seeking to meet the points raised by the aggrieved persons who had filed the representation before it on 17 December last year but has also took preliminary objections to the maintainability of the PIL, citing certain judgments of the Apex Court and various High Courts to the effect that public interest ligitation cannot be entertained in service matters. 

Amicus curie and senior advocate Z. A. Shah, submitted that in terms of the Supreme Court order on 2 January this year, the High Court was required to decide the PIL on merits. 

Advocate R. A. Jan, senior counsel representing the aggrieved candidates submitted that the Court on considering the seriousness of the matter with reference to the change in the standard of examination by shifting to Digital Evaluation and On Screen Marking (DE/OSM) has entertained the suo-moto PIL for ascertaining as to how the Commission has made such a change in the procedure, which according to him was full of errors. 

On being asked by the court as to how the PIL was maintainable on the subject of selection on behalf of the aggrieved candidates, as the same amounts to adversary litigation based on challenge to the enlisted qualifying candidates, advocate Jan submitted that when the selection is found to be based on fraud or full of errors and data corruption, Court has power to deal the matter in PIL. 

Advocate Javed Iqbal, representing some applicants submitted that some of the aggrieved candidates have already challenged the action of the PSC in separate petition with reference to shifting of mode and method of the evaluation of the answer papers from manual to digital screen evaluation and the same was expected to be listed for consideration before the Single Bench of the Court within a day or so. He submitted that the petition may be considered along with this PIL for consideration. 

 “Admittedly, the case at hand is a service matter, therefore, needs a decision first to be taken on preliminary objection, but the only impediment is pendency of the SLP as we are not clear as to whether the Supreme Court has left this Court free to proceed ahead with the case notwithstanding Special Leave Petition pending before that court and deal with the preliminary objection,” the court said, adding, “In our view, the order cannot be read in essence that the Supreme Court directed this Court to decide the PIL on its merits whether or not it is maintainable, therefore, we thought it proper to await further orders with reference to clarification from the Supreme Court which may be sought by the parties in appearance,” the court said.

In light of the foregone discussion, the court deferred further consideration of the matter till clarification is sought either by Public Service Commission or by any aggrieved party from the top Court as to whether in view of the pendency of Special Leave Petition the high court can proceed to deal with the preliminary objection regarding maintainability of PIL. 

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