IMPORTANT POINTS
(1) Termination – Such of candidates who are working for sufficiently two years by this time and have completed their period of probation were not at fault at any point of time, cannot be shown the door.
(2) Punctuation marks by themselves do not control meaning of Statute when its meaning is otherwise obvious.

JUDGMENT :

Ajay Rastogi, J.

Civil Appeal @ SLP (C) No(s).4310 OF 2022

Civil Appeal @ SLP (C) No(s).4443 OF 2022

Civil Appeals @ SLP (C) No(s).5338­5341 OF 2022

Civil Appeal @ SLP (C) No(s).5409 OF 2022

1. Leave granted.

2. The present batch of appeals has been preferred by the candidates who on qualifying the 6th Combined Civil Services Examination, 2016, conducted by respondent no.3, Jharkhand Public Service Commission (hereinafter referred to as “the Commission”) and having been appointed on the recommendations made by the Commission, completed their period of probation and got regular postings, their appointments have been cancelled initially by the learned Single Judge by its judgment dated 7th June, 2021, which came to be affirmed by the Division Bench of the High Court on dismissal of the Letters Patent Appeal filed at the instance of the present appellants by judgment and order impugned dated 23rd February, 2022.

3. The facts in brief which may be relevant for the purpose, with the consent of parties have been noticed from Civil Appeal @ Special Leave Petition (Civil) No.4310 of 2022 (Barun Kumar & Ors. Versus State of Jharkhand & Ors.).

4. That in terms of the Bihar Re-Organisation Act, 2000, Bihar Civil Services (Executive Branch) and Bihar Junior Civil Services (Recruitment) Rules, 1951(hereinafter referred to as the “Rules 1951”) was adopted by the State of Jharkhand vide notification no.6184 dated 9th November, 2002 and accordingly, the State of Jharkhand held its Combined Civil Service Examination in terms of the Rules 1951.

5. That prior to the present selection process which came to be initiated by the Commission pursuant to Advertisement no.1/2015, the respondents held 5th Combined Civil Services Examination conducted by the Commission pursuant to Advertisement no.6/2013 dated 7th July, 2013, there was a specific note in the advertisement that preliminary examination had two papers of 100 marks each and there shall be subject papers in the main examination and that the marks obtained in General Hindi will not be added in the marks obtained in the written examination and personality test, but the candidates who failed to secure 30 marks in compulsory General Hindi, will not be considered eligible for the written examination and accordingly Paper-I (General Hindi) was considered to be a qualifying test and before the 6th Combined Civil Services Examination, 2016 came to be notified, there was a series of meetings held by the Expert Committee for revision of the examination pattern for Combined Civil Services Examination chaired by Mr. V.S. Dubey, IAS (Retd.) and the Expert Committee, after examining the Pattern of Examination, made the recommendations,¹[“65. Briefly speaking, the Expert Committee has the following recommendations to make :­

(a) All the optional papers, both at the level of the preliminary and main examinations of the Civil Services, be done away and replaced by common, compulsory papers.

(b) The Preliminary Examination should be conducted in two papers only, each of 200 marks, compulsory for all candidates. The broad syllabus of these two papers could be the same as that of the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) of the Union Public Service Commission, with minor modifications to accommodate local interests. These two papers could be called: (i) the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) Paper I, and (ii) the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) Paper II. Questions to be asked in these two papers must be multiple choice, objective type, with no negative marking. Based on the result of the Preliminary Examination, the number of the candidates to be called for the written (Main) Examination should be around ten times of the vacancies to be filled. The cut off marks of the Main Examination should be decided accordingly by the Commission.

(c) The Main Examination should be conducted for a maximum of 1000 marks, d