JUDGMENT :

SANDEEP V. MARNE, J.

1. Rule. Rule made returnable forthwith. With the consent of the parties, petition is taken up for final hearing.

2. Petitioner is aggrieved by the result of the selection process in which no candidate is found suitable for the post of Assistant Engineer in Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Petitioner claims that interview has erroneously been conducted against the provisions of the Rules in place of a Skill Test and even though he has secured substantially higher marks in the Written Test, he is declared ‘not selected’ on the ground of award of lesser marks in the interview. This has led to non-filling up of the advertised posts of Assistant Engineer. Petitioner therefore prays for appointment on the post of Assistant Engineer.

3. Brief facts of the case are that, Petitioner is a Civil Engineer having educational qualification of B.Tech. After putting in experience in private organization during the years 2011 to 2018, he participated in the selection process initiated by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) for appointment as Assistant Engineer on contractual basis in the year 2018 and after being declared successful, he came to be appointed as Engineer on contract basis for a period of one year vide order dated 27.07.2018. He was allotted the service staff quarters by TISS. At the end of tenure of one year, his services were extended upto 4.10.2020 vide order dated 1.10.2019. Further extension was granted upto 4.10.2021 by order dated 19.10.2020. His services were again extended upto 4.10.2022 vide order dated 25.10.2021.

4. An advertisement was issued by the respondent-Institute for filling up various posts, including one post of Assistant Engineer on regular basis. In the advertisement, the post of Assistant Engineer was classified as Group-B Level-7 post. Petitioner applied in pursuance of the advertisement. Respondent-institute published syllabus and procedure for filling up the post of Assistant Engineer. The selection was to comprise of written test of 100 marks with weightage of 50%. The Skill Test/Interaction of 50 marks was also scheduled to be conducted with weightage of 50%. The qualifying marks in the Skill Test/Interaction was declared as 25. Petitioner appeared for the written test held on 27.05.2022 and 31.05.2022. He scored 58 marks in objective paper and 73 marks in descriptive paper and claims to have secured first rank in the written test. The Skill Test/Interaction was scheduled to be conducted on 22.6.2022. However, petitioner avers that no Skill Test was conducted and instead an interview was held, in which he was awarded only 22 marks which fell short of 3 marks as compared to qualifying 25 marks. Petitioner has also made certain averments with regard to the manner in which the interview was conducted. It appears that, none of the seven candidates could secure passing marks of 25 in the interview. Petitioner scored highest marks even in the interview. However, since he could not cross the barrier of 25 marks, the respondents declared that no candidate was found suitable and decided to go for re-advertisement. Petitioner is aggrieved by this action of the respondents.

5. Appearing for Petitioner, Mr. Walia, the learned counsel would submit that conduct of interview is in violation of the provisions of Cadre Recruitment Rules, 2021 (CCR) under which only Skill Test is required to be conducted of 50 marks with qualifying marks of 25. That under Rule 22(h), no interview could be conducted for appointment to Group ‘B’ and Group ‘C’ post. That the post of Assistant Engineer being classified as Group ‘B’, interview could not have been conducted. He has taken us through the evaluation sheet, which shows that the Skill Test is shown to have been held for only 10 marks, whereas remaining 40 marks were allotted to various attributes such as ‘Communication Skill’, ‘Subject Knowl