SThe Supreme Court on Friday directed the J&K Public Service Commission not to declare result of KAS examination 2016.
“Our order dated 21.01.2019 passed inS.L.P.(C) No. 1493/2019 leaves no room for any ambiguity or doubt that thoughthe selection process can be finalised no appointment will be made. What wouldrequire to be made clear is that if appointments are not permissible to bemade, the declaration of the results would be a futile exercise and may givecause to unnecessary third-party rights which we must avoid,” said a divisionbench of Chief Justice RanjanGogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta. Accordingly, thebench said, the result of the selection process shall not be declared.
“We also make it clear that the High Courtis free to decide the pending Public Interest Litigation and all connectedcases both on maintainability and merits,” the top court said, adding, “Werequest the High Court to do so at the earliest, preferably within a period offour weeks from today.”
The bench was hearing SLP filed by theaspirants—Owais Ashraf Shah and others. The examination was held from July 2 to August 8 last year. As many as 6427candidates had appeared in the examination and 963 of them qualified forpersonality test and viva-voice.
“We defer further consideration of thematter till clarification is sought either by Public Service Commission or byany aggrieved party from the Supreme Court as to whether in view of thependency of Special Leave Petition this court can proceed to deal with thepreliminary objection regarding maintainability of PIL,” a division bench ofJustice Ali Muhammad Magrey and Justice Sanjeev Kumar had said.
The PIL hadcommenced on 21 December last year on the representation of 83 applicants,alleging irregularities on account of alleged data corruption and huge humanerror in the digital marking adopted for evaluation of answer scripts in theCombined Competitive Examination held by the J&K Public Service Commission.On the same day (December 21), the Court also directed that till next date ofhearing, there shall be stay on further selection process and the case wasposted for further consideration on January 28.
The J&KPSChowever approached the Supreme Court against the High Court order. On January21, the Apex Court allowed the premier recruiting agency for gazetted posts tocarry out further selection process in the KAS examination 2016 but barred itfrom making the appointment.