HC cancels 6th merit list of Jharkhand PSC exams

In a significant judgement the Jharkhand High Court has cancelled the merit list of 6th Jharkhand Public Service Commission examination and ordered to prepare a new merit list in 8 weeks. The court has also directed the state government to identify the officials responsible for the mistake in the merit list and take action against them.The High Court on Monday gave its verdict on various petitions challenging the results of the Sixth Combined Civil Services Competitive Examination conducted by the Jharkhand Public Service Commission. Justice Sanjay Kumar Dwivedi, while canceling the merit list of 6th JPSC, declared the appointment of 326 candidates as illegal.The bench had reserved the verdict in the matter after the completion of hearing on February 11, this year.
Advocate General Rajeev Ranjan on behalf of the State Government and Advocate Sanjay Piparwal on behalf of JPSC had presented the case. Opposing the contention of the applicants, he told the court that JPSC had released the result of the sixth civil services examination as per the terms of the advertisement. On the basis of this result 326 candidates were declared successful. After publishing the result, the recommendation was sent to the state government for appointment.During the hearing, the applicants said that there are many discrepancies in the 6th JPSC result. JPSC released the final result by adding the qualifying paper marks, which is wrong. Apart from this, many other irregularities were found in preparing the result. 
The court had also made successful candidates as defendants in this case . It is noteworthy that the petitioners Rahul Kumar, Dilip Kumar Singh, Prakash Ram, Abhishek Mani Sinha, Chandan, Ved Prakash Yadav, Nishu Kumari, Mukesh Kumar, Kumar Avinash, Sanjay Kumar Mahato, Pankaj Kumar, Ruby Sinha, Sumit Kumar Mahato, Ravikant Prasad Gautam Kumar had challenged the sixth JPSC result by filing a petition. They had demanded to cancel the result and publish the result afresh.

Altogether sixteen different petitions filed in the case, were being heard continuously by the High Court since February 3, 2021. The counsel for the petitioners told the court that JPSC had prepared the final result by adding the marks of the qualifying paper, which is wrong. Along with this, more manipulation has been done in preparing the result. 
This is not the first time that the High Court has intervened into the JPSC exam results . Some of the previous JPSC Chairman and members were even sent to jail after the investigation into the selection process of the Commission.