( 1 ) BY this judgement I propose to dispose of five writ Petitions which were heard together as they involved same question of law to be decided on substantially the same set of facts. All the Petitioners in these writ Petitions are aspirants for selection to Batch No. 102 of National Defence Academy (NDA ).

( 2 ) THE Respondents UPSC issued advertisement-inviting applications for entry into course No. 102 of National Defence Examination. For this purpose, all these Petitioners appeared in the examination and were successful. Thereafter call letters were sent to them for appearing in the intelligence test, SSB test and medical fitness test for final selection to the aforementioned course. In the Employment News of dated 3-9 July, 1999, results of the entrance examination were published. Declaring these results, number of vacancies as intimated by the Government was 337/ (214) of the Army, 30 in the Navy, 73 in the Air Force and 20 the in the Executive Branch of Naval Academy. The names of the Petitioners in the said list appeared in the following manner :-

1. Shri Gunjan (Petitioner in CW No. 5213/99) 417 2. Shri Anand Kumar (Petitioner in CW No. 5213/99) 385 3. Sh