The High Court has directed the State government to issue notices to gazetted probationers—over 700 in all—appointed through the Karnataka Public Service Commission (KPSC) in 1998, 1999 and 2004, and get their response to a petition challenging the selection process.

With hearing on the petition by Khaleel Ahmed, V Raghu and Suresh Kumar challenging the selection of gazetted probationers having resumed, a division bench comprising Justices N Kumar and Rathnakala directed the government to issue notices to all candidates selected in the three years.

During the hearing, the bench asked the petitioners why they did not make the selected candidates party to the petition.

The petitioners responded that they were not seeking cancellation of the entire list but only questioning the procedural lapses and violations in the appointment of gazetted probationers and hence made only the government and the KPSC respondents.

The bench then directed the government to issue notices to all the selected candidates.

It could be recalled that the High Court, following the PIL petition, had appointed Justice Mohammed Anwar to monitor and speed up the CID investigation.

After the CID submitted its report, the High Court constituted a fact-finding committee comprising some of the petitioners, advocates and even selected candidates besides some members of the KPSC to look into the CID report.

In its report in February 2014, the committee stated that there were irregularities such as the one to destroy the evidence of candidates whose marks the KPSC had tampered with to help them get the plum posts.

The committee also said that the marks of several candidates were tampered with to help them in the revaluation. It had also said that there were discrepancies in average marks.

In a recent development, a division bench headed by the chief justice recused from hearing the matter.

At the previous hearing, referring to anonymous letters in which several allegations were made against the petitioners and the advocates, the chief justice had said that the matter should be heard by some other bench. Hence, it was placed before the bench headed by Justice Kumar.