2016 Civil Services exam case: SC dismisses appeal challenging Jharkhand HC order

The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal challenging a Jharkhand High Court order directing the State Public Service Commission to revise the results of the preliminary exam (PE) of the Combined Civil Services held in 2016.

A bench of Justices Indu Malhotra and Ajay Rastogi said there was no ground to interfere with the impugned judgment passed by the high court.

"The Special Leave Petition is accordingly dismissed," the bench said.

Advocate Shubhashis Rasik Soren appeared for one of the intervenors in the case in the apex court.

The apex court was hearing an appeal filed by Dipak Kumar and others challenging October 21, 2019 order of the high court, which had quashed the state government resolution of February 12, 2018 and the revised results announced by JPSC on August 6, 2018 declaring 34,634 candidates as successful.

JPSC had issued an advertisement for conducting the Combined Civil Services Competitive Examination, 2016, for filling up in all 326 posts in different civil services with the rider that the number of posts could be increased or decreased.

It stated that on the basis of the preliminary examination, the number of candidates to be selected for main examinations would be about 15 times the vacancies in different categories.

The PE was conducted on December 18, 2016, and the results were published on February 23, 2017, declaring 5,138 candidates to be successful.

A plea was filed in the high court by a reserved category candidate saying those with fewer marks than him were declared successful in unreserved category.

The state government then came up with a Resolution stating that candidates of reserved category, who had secured equal to, or more marks than the last selected candidate in unreserved category, should be allowed to appear in the Main Examinations.

Following this, 6,103 candidates were declared successful.

Thereafter, a Resolution was issued by the state government in 2018 which resulted in the publication of second revised results of PE wherein 34,634 candidates were declared successful.

Some aspirants challenged the resolution and the subsequent publication of the results, in the high court in 2018 which was dismissed.

The High Court bench quashed the resolution and the result declaring 34,634 candidates as successful.

It had also directed JPSC to publish the results of the Main Examinations, confined to the candidates, declared successful in its first revised results published on August 11, 2017.