Judgment

BHAGWATI, J.:- These appeals by special leave are directed against a judgment of the Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashing and setting aside certain selections made by the Haryana Public Service Commission to the Haryana Civil Service (Executive) and other allied services. The judgment in part proceeds on surmises and conjectures and has made certain uncharitable observations against the Chairman and Members of the Haryana Public Service Commission without any warrant and hence it is necessary to set out the facts giving rise to the appeals in some detail.

2. Sometime in October 1980 the Haryana Public Service Commission invited applications for recruitment to 61 posts in Haryana Civil Service (Executive) and other allied Services. The procedure for recruitment was governed by the Punjab Civil Service (Executive Branch) Rules, 1930 as applicable in the State of Haryana, Rule 9, Clause (1) of these Rules provided that a competitive examination shall be held at any place in Haryana in each year in or about the month of January for the purpose of selection by competition of as many candidates for the Haryana Civil Service (Executive) and other allied services as the Governor of Haryana may determine and such competitive examination shall be held in accordance with the Regulations contained in Appendix I to the Rules. Rule 10 laid down the conditions for eligibility to appear at the competitive examination but we are not concerned with these conditions of eligibility in the present appeals, Regulation I in Appendix I provided that the competitive examination shall include compulsory and optional subjects and every candidate shall take all the compulsory subjects and not more than three of the optional subjects, provided that ex-servicemen shall not be required to appear in the optional subjects. The compulsory subjects included English Essay, Hindi, Hindi Essay and General Knowledge carrying in the aggregate 400 marks and there was also viva voce examination which was compulsory and which carried 200 marks and each optional subject carried 100 marks. Vide Regulation 5. The result was that the written examination carried an aggregate of 700 marks for candidates in general and for ex-serviceman, it carried an aggregate of 400 marks while in case of both, the viva voce examination carried 200 marks. Some argument has been turned on the true interpretation of Regulation 3 and hence it would be desirable to set it out in extenso. It reads as follows :

"3. No candidate shall be eligible to appear in the viva voce test unless he obtains 45 per cent marks in the aggregate of all subjects including at least 33 per cent marks in each of the language papers in Hindi (in Devnagri Script) and Hindi Essay provided that if at any examination a sufficient number of candidates do not obtain 45 per cent marks in the aggregate the Commission may at their discretion lower this percentage to not below 40 per cent for the language papers remaining unchanged."

It appears that in response to the advertisement issued by the Haryana Public Service Commission, about 6000 candidates applied for recruitment and appeared at the written examination held by the Haryana Public Service Commission. Out of about 6000 candidates who appeared for the written examination, over 1300 obtained more than 45 marks and thus qualified for being called for interview for the viva voce examination. The Haryana Public Service Commission invited all the 1300 and more candidates who qualified for the viva voce test, for interview and the interviews lasted for almost half a year. It seems that though originally applications were invited for recruitment to 61 posts, the number of vacancies rose during the time take up in the written examination and the viva voce test and ultimately 119 posts became available for being filled and on the basis of total marks obtained in the written examination as well as viva voce test, 119 candidates were selected and rec