Ranchi: The Jharkhand High Court in an important decision on Monday cancelled the merit list of the 6th JPSC exam and directed the commission to prepare a fresh merit list within eight weeks and send it to the government so that on the basis of new merit list the government can allot the cadres.
However, the court decided not to cancel the final results of the 6th JPSC exam and rejected all the petitions which were filed in this connection. A total of 16 petitions were filed challenging the final results with petitioners claiming that reservation policy, age limit etc were not properly implemented.
The High Court had completed the hearing between February 3 to 17 and after that had kept its order reserved in the case. On Monday the court of Justice SK Dwivedi passed an order in this regard.
The Jharkhand Public Service Commission had on April 23, 2020 declared 326 candidates sucessful in the exams and handed over the merit list to the state government.
Justice Dwivedi in its order said that JPSC did not make the merit list as per the rules as even qualifying marks were included while preparing the list whereas as there was no provision of including the qualifying marks as per rules of the commission. The court said that a merit list which had been prepared against the rules can not be considered valid therefore the merit list is being rejected.
The court directed the JPSC to prepare a new merit list without including the qualifying marks and send the same to the state government which after receiving the list in another four weeks should again allot the cadres.
The court in its order took serious note of the irregularities committed in preparations of the merit list and said that responsibility should be fixed on the people responsible for it. The court said that JPSC or other on par forum should identify such people and take action against them so that in future these types of irregularities can be prevented.