Underscoring that the maintainability of a plea against Kashmir Administrative Service examination as a Public interest litigation (PIL) requires to be considered first, the High Court Wednesday said it would decide the matter only after getting a Supreme Court nod for the same.
A division bench of Justice Ali Muhammad Magrey and Justice Sanjeev Kumar deferred the matter for further consideration after observing that the apex court order is unclear whether the High Court would deal with the maintainability of the plea.
On 21 December 2018, the High Court had stayed the selection process of KAS-2016 after a group of aggrieved candidates approached it. The court had treated the matter as a PIL and directed the PSC to file a detailed counter-affidavit to the objections raised by the candidates.
The PSC, however, approached the Supreme Court against the High Court order. On January 21, the apex court allowed the J&K PSC to carry out further selection process but barred it from making appointments.
In its order, the SC, however, made it clear that the HC would be free to decide the suo motu PIL on merits on the date fixed.
In its counter affidavit in the High Court, the PSC has raised the preliminary objection that "a service writ petition cannot be treated as a PIL".
The High Court division bench, while hearing the matter now, observed that "admittedly, the case at hand is a service matter and, therefore, needs a decision first to be taken on the preliminary objection".
But the only impediment, the bench said, is pendency of the SLP as it is unclear whether the Supreme Court has left it free to proceed ahead with the case despite the SLP and deal with the preliminary objection.
The bench said that it "thought it proper to await further orders with reference to clarification from the Supreme Court which may be sought by the parties in appearance".
"In light of the above, 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".
The bench issued the order after citing judgments from SC and J&K high court. The PSC had conducted the combined competitive (mains) examination from July 24 to August 8 last year.
Out of 6427 candidates who had appeared in the KAS mains examination 2016, 963 were declared to have qualified for the personality test and viva-voice.
In their plea before the High Court, the aggrieved candidates alleged, that PSC has resorted to "arbitrary scaling and moderation which wasn't provided in the notification when the posts were advertised".
