In a major decision, the MP High Court has set aside a new rule by the state government restricting meritorious candidates of the reserved category to their respective quota seats and cancelled the results of the State Services Examination (SSE) 2019 conducted by the MP Public Service Commission (MPPSC).
The court has directed the MPPSC to conduct and complete the recruitment process according to previous rules.
The bench of justices Sujoy Paul and Dwarkadhish Bansal on Thursday issued an 89-page order, holding the amendment dated February 17, 2020, to the MP State Services Examination Rules 2015 brought about by the Madhya Pradesh government as ultra vires (exceeding the scope of powers) and setting it aside. “Resultantly, the recruitment process must be conducted and completed in consonance with the unamended examination rules of 2015,” the court said in its order.
The examination rules of 2015 were amended by the government in February 2020, paving the way for separate category wise merit lists of successful candidates. This meant that the meritorious candidates of scheduled caste (SC), scheduled tribe (ST), other backward classes (OBC) and economically weaker section (EWS) categories could not be selected for unreserved seats despite getting equivalent marks as unreserved candidates.
This rule was challenged in the High Court by about 60 students and the organization of SC/ST/OBC and minorities employees, through 49 different petitions through advocates Rameshwar Singh Thakur and Vinayak Prasad Shah. In January 2021, the HC had issued an interim order, subjecting the final recruitment to the court order.
Despite the matter being in court and the state government consenting to change the contentious rule of February 2020, the results of the SSE 2019 preliminary and mains examination were declared by the MPPSC in December 2020 and December 2021 respectively following this rule. Currently, the MPPSC is conducting interviews with the candidates selected from the mains exam.
This issue was put before the court, hearings were completed on March 31 and orders were reserved. On Thursday, the detailed orders were issued, setting aside the rule and cancelling the contentious result.
“The Court held that the February 2020 rules brought of the MP government were in violation of the Indra Sawhney judgment of Supreme Court (of 1992) where it was clearly mentioned that the meritorious students of reserved category shall be migrated to open category seats,” Advocate Thakur said while speaking to The Week.
‘SSE Mains will have to be conducted afresh’
The HC orders effectively mean that the MPPSC will have to issue fresh results for the SSE 2019 preliminary exams by shifting the meritorious reserved category candidates to unreserved seats and conducting the mains exam afresh, Thakur confirmed to THE WEEK. “This will also mean that the reserved category candidates who had missed the opportunity to appear for mains exam by one, two or three marks, will now get the opportunity to participate in the recruitment process. These were the students who had approached the High Court in the matter,” the council said. He said that about 1, 50,000 candidates in the reserved category were affected by the new rules.
In all, 10,767 candidates had been declared successful in the preliminary exams while 1918 candidates cleared the main examination, the result of which was announced on December 31, 2021.
The MPPSC, in November 2019, had advertised 571 vacancies including those of posts in state administrative services, state police services, finance and revenue departments and others. After the preliminary results, an objection was taken to the fact that the MPPSC had issued a list of 3613 successful candidates in the general category for 137 vacancies - far exceeding the rule of ‘15 times the seats’. Later, while declaring the mains results, the MPPSC amended the number of unreserved vacancies to 203 and the total number of vacancies to 637.
