Cops' recruitment: HC sets aside merit list under orphan category

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 25

Five years after the Haryana Staff Selection Commission initiated the process of filling 5,000 posts of constable and other police personnel, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has taken note of the variance in the grant of marks in the orphan category by different scrutiny committees before setting aside the merit list.

Five-mark claim

The court is of the opinion that only the process of re-examining and scrutinising the documents submitted by the candidates claiming the benefit of additional five marks on account of being an orphan is required to be conducted afresh.

Justice Jaishree Thakur

The HC also directed the re-examination and scrutiny of documents by the candidates claiming the benefit.

Justice Jaishree Thakur said the court was of the opinion that the merit list ought to be set aside and had no hesitation in doing “so in respect of

the candidates, who had applied under advertisement No.3/2018 dated April 16, 2018, for all five categories and laid their claim to five additional marks under the socio-economic criterion being orphan”.

Justice Thakur said the court was of the opinion that only the process of re-examining and scrutinising the documents submitted by the candidates claiming the benefit of additional five marks on account of being an orphan was required to be conducted afresh rather than setting aside the entire selection process and directing fresh conduct of examination, especially in the absence of allegation of corrupt motive or malpractice.

Justice Thakur said the mistake was committed at the stage of the scrutiny of documents. As such, the exercise of revising the merit list was required to be restarted from that stage. “The respondent-commission is hereby directed to revise the result of all such candidates by strictly adhering to the criteria as specified in the advertisement regarding allocation of five additional marks to candidates claiming under the orphan category”.

Justice Thakur added the term ‘orphan’ had not been defined in the advertisement and there were various interpretations evident from definitions in Merriam Webster, Macmillan, Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries. It would, as such, be in fitness of things to direct the same interpretation of the word orphan as was applied to group-D posts.