In cases of admitted administrative failure during a recruitment process, a court may exercise equitable jurisdiction to allow selection of candidates who proved their merit in later stages, provided the ruling is strictly limited to the peculiar case facts and does not establish a precedent for interpreting recruitment rules.

ORDER

1) Leave granted.

2) The present appeals arises out of the order dated 11.12.2024 passed by the Gauhati High Court (hereinafter referred to as, ‘The High Court’) in Writ Appeal Nos. 361, 363, 364, 371, and 373 of 2023. The core grievance of the appellantState in this matter is that the High Court allowed the appeals preferred by the private respondents, directing the Assam Public Service Commission (hereinafter referred to as, ‘The APSC’) to declare their results, and further directed the appellant-State to accord them appointments.

3) The appellant contends that these directions were in complete non-observance of Rule 11 of the Assam Public Services (Combined Competitive Examination) Rules, 1989 (hereinafter referred to as ‘the 1989 Rules’).

4) It is not in dispute that the private respondents namely Shalini Khan, Saswati Das, Manish Baruah, Girbani Deka and Vidisha Bodo who were unsuccessful in clearing the Preliminary Examination of the Combined Competitive Examination; pursuant to an interim order dated 30.07.2019 passed by a Learned Single Judge of the High Court in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 3328/2019 and other connected petitions, were permitted to participate in the Main Examination. Subsequently, the private respondents successfully cleared the Main Exam and the interview stage also. The present appeals have been preferred, inter alia, seeking to draw this Court’s attention to the true statutory intent of Rule 11 of the 1989 Rules and to seek interference with respect to the judgment under challenge.

5) Shorn of unnecessary details, the facts as involved in these present appeals are that, the APSC issued Advertisement No. 9/2018 on 17.05.2018, inviting applications to fill 165 posts across different services. Pursuant to Rule 11 , a preliminary examination as required was held on 30.12.2018. On 13.03.2019, the APSC published the results, declaring 3,361 candidates as qualified for further participation in Main Examination. Later, on 20.03.2019, the answer keys for the Preliminary Examination were uploaded on the APSC website. Following the objections by several unsuccessful candidates, the APSC, suo motu, revisited the results and declared 406 additional candidates, along with two of the PWD (OH) category, as qualified. This was notified by the APSC via a press release dated 20.05.2019, specifying that despite due caution, certain discrepancies had crept into the answer keys. Consequently, the APSC revised the erroneous answer keys with the assistance of domain experts and uploaded the revised answer key on the APSC website on 09.05.2019. The short-listed candidates across both the lists i.e., original list and list of additional qualified candidates after revision of the answer keys, were required to fulfill the requisite formalities to appear for the Main examination.

6) In the meantime, Respondent No. 1, an unsuccessful candidate filed Writ Petition No. 3341/2019 before the Gauhati High Court raising a grievance that she was not awarded full marks for certain answers, therefore, deprived the opportunity to secure the prescribed cut-off marks, henceforth, directions were sought. Apart from that, 20 other writ petitions were also filed raising the grievance about the correctness of the answer key subsequently published by the ASPC. It is not out of place to mention, vide order dated 30.07.2019 in WP(C) NO. 3328/2019 and other connected petitions, the High Court permitted the private respondents to participate in Main Examination while restraining APSC from declaring the final result, which would be subject to outcome of the writ petitions. By an order dated 23.10.2019, the Single Judge of the High Court had directed the APSC to clarify, by filing an affidavit, that amongst the 3361 candidates who were initially declared successful by the APSC on 13.03.2019 to appear in Main Examination, and in view of revised answer key how many candidates had actually not qualified for the Main Examination. In the affidavit fil