Ashutosh Kumar, ACJ. – The common prayer in all the writ petitions, including the PIL, is cancellation of integrated 70th Combined (Preliminary) Competitive Examination, conducted by the Bihar Public Service Commission (for short ‘the Commission’), held on 13.12.2024 and 04.01.2025 and for holding a re-examination on the grounds of (i) systemic failure of the Commission in conducting a free and fair examination; (ii) logistical and administrative mismanagement at examination centres; (iii) impermissibility of holding two Preliminary Examinations; (iv) prevaricating stand of the Commission with respect to normalization; (v) wrong key-answers; (vi) unfair answer evaluation process; (vii) malpractices at the examination centres; (viii) strong chances of paper leak; and (ix) completely opaque methodology for coming out with a combined merit-list, without taking into account the equal standard of rigour for the students, thus offending Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution of India.

2. It has been argued by all the petitioners that the above-noted grounds have led to the process of examination and the result being shrouded/mired in controversy. It is the assertion of the petitioners that for maintaining the purity of the examination process as also for restoring faith in the system, the only way now is to hold a re-examination in a fair manner. Not doing so, it has been urged, would erode the Constitutional values, which undergird Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution of India, mandating that selection process conducted by public authorities must be fair, transparent and accountable. Any irregularity in the process gives rise to doubts whether the process has resulted in denial of equal access to all persons and in that case, the entire process gets tainted, requiring cancellation of examination/result and holding of fresh examination.

3. The countervailing arguments on behalf of the Commission and the State are that the process was fair and all care was taken to conduct the examination in a proper manner with very limited complaints regarding mismanagement at Bapu Pariksha Parisar (for short ‘BPP’), the centre with maximum examinees, and few of the keyanswers being wrong. But those issues were resolved by referring the wrong key-answers to the Committee of Experts who have given their reasons for selecting the correct answer; and the Commission in its wisdom and experience chose to conduct a re-examination for the candidates of BPP centre only and not for other 912 centres in the entire State of Bihar. The result of successful candidates in the Preliminary Examination has been published in which approximately 21000 students have passed the examination. Their careers could not be lightly dealt with. It was reiterated that there is a need to preserve public confidence in the sanctity of the selection process, but at the same time, there is a requirement of observing fairness towards candidates who invest time and resources in attempting to clear through a selection process and both these considerations have a Constitutional foundation, going beyond service and administrative law principles.

4. Animadverting to the unfairness in the holding of examination, the petitioner in PIL, whose locus has seriously been challenged, has pointed out that (a) the Commission had issued notification on 23.09.2024, inviting on-line applications but without giving any advertisement number; (b) According to the press note of the Commission on 08.12.2024, a total of 4.80 lakhs online applications were made, out of which approximately 1.3 lakhs online applications with payment were received in the last four days, when the server of the online portal of the Commission was absolutely slow, resulting in around 80,000 to 90,000 applicants not having been able to complete the process of filling up of the forms. Nonetheless, the online portal was re-opened and the final date of filling up the forms was extended on two occasions. Further, commenting on the proce