1. This group of writ petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution are filed by the learned Advocates to challenge the result of the preliminary test conducted by the Bihar Public Service Commission for recruitment to 217 vacancies in the Sub-ordinate Judiciary of the State of Bihar.

2. The main challenge in these writ petitions is four-fold. First; the Bihar Public Service Commission (hereinafter referred to as the Commission) has no authority to conduct preliminary examination prior to the competitive examination contemplated under the Bihar Judicial Service (Recruitment) Rules, 1955. Second; the disputed preliminary examination was conducted on the basis of the Bihar Civil Service (Judicial Branch) (Recruitment) (Amendment) Rules, 2008 ignoring the sub- sequent amendment by Amendment Rules of 2009. Prior to the amendment by the Amendment Rules of 2009 the reservation was confined to the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates; whereas under the Amendment Rules of 2009 the benefit of reservation has been extended to Backward Class and the Extremely Backward Class candidates also. Thus, by not following the Amendment Rules of 2009, the candidates belonging to th