Cancellation of public examinations must be justified by systemic irregularities; isolated issues like double admit cards do not warrant such drastic measures.

JUDGMENT :

ASHUTOSH KUMAR, CJ.

1. We have heard Mr. R.K.D. Choudhury, learned Deputy Solicitor General of India for the petitioners and Mr. A. Ahmed, learned Advocate for the respondents.

2. The challenge in the present petitions is to the order dated 06.05.2019 passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal (hereinafter to be referred as ‘Tribunal’), Guwahati Bench, whereby the public examination held for the post of Mate (SSK) in the office of the HQ 137 Works Engineers, Dimapur, Nagaland has been cancelled and the authorities of the petitioners have been directed to hold examination afresh for such posts. The Tribunal has further recorded that if some candidates have been selected and posted pursuant to the afore-noted examination, they shall be allowed to continue till completion of the selection process, as directed, for filling up the advertised vacancies. It was made clear that in the fresh exercise for selection, the candidates would be served with due notice within a period of four months from the date of receipt of the copy of the order of the Tribunal.

3. The Directorate General (Pers.), Military Engineer Services, Ministry of Defence had issued an employment notice [EN No.34303/LRS/12-13/E1B (S)] inviting applications for various posts, including 87 posts of Mate (SSK) in HQ 137 Works Engineer, Dimapur rd (Nagaland). The last date of receipt of application was fixed on 3th January, 2015 and the scheduled date for written examination was 14th February, 2015.

However, the date of the written examination was postponed to 10.05.2015. Later on, it was decided to hold the written examination on 11.05.2015 for the reason of prevailing volatile security situation in Nagaland. The examination was conducted without any objection from any one of the candidates. After the written examination, the results were declared and the successful candidates in order of merit were appointed. The merit list of the selected candidates had been prepared and finalized as per the standard operating procedure by a Board of Officers.

Be it also noted that evaluation of the answer sheets was carried out by a separate Board of Officers.

4. After uploading of the results on May 4, 2016, the respondents challenged the examination process on various grounds, including the change of the venue of written examination even though the advertisement clearly spelt out that the applicants had to indicate the area for which he had applied for and the applicant would be considered only for that particular area which he would apply for and that no change of centre of examination would be allowed under any circumstance; that the results were based only on written examination and not on further interview; the authorities not adopting the system of OMR answer sheets which is commonly used in competitive examination for posts under the Central Government or the State Government; the examination being held on two different dates and few questions of the examination held on both the dates tallied as also for the reason of some of the candidates having been issued admit cards for two Centres, which was impermissible as per the terms of the advertisement.

5. It would also be relevant in this context to state that the challenge to the holding of examination and the consequent preparation of merit list and posting of Mat