RAJESH SHANKAR, J.

1. Heard the learned counsel for the parties.

2. The present writ petition has been filed for issuance of direction upon the respondents to publish the petitioner's Main's Examination result of 5th Combined Civil Service Exam, 2015 conducted by the Jharkhand Public Service Commission (hereinafter referred to as "JPSC") pursuant to Adv. No. 06 of 2013 which has not been published on the ground of wrong shadowing of Optical Mark Recognition (in short OMR) sheet in General Hindi paper.

3. The factual background of the case as stated in the writ petition is that pursuant to the Advertisement No. 06/2013, the petitioner applied for 5th Combined Civil Services (PT) Examination as SC category candidate. After being successful in Preliminary Test, the petitioner was issued admit card for Mains Examination and thereafter, he appeared in the Mains Examination, but was declared unsuccessful in the marks statement of 5th Combined Civil Service Exam, 2015 on the ground of wrong shadowing of OMR sheet of General Hindi paper which gives rise to filing of the present writ petition.

4. Mr. Indrajeet Sinha, the learned counsel for the petitioner submits that in the OMR sheet of General Hindi, the column for paper code was provided, but in fact there was no such paper code mentioned in the General Hindi question paper and the admit card. The petitioner got confused and asked the Invigilator about the paper code, but he could not help the petitioner and suggested him to do the needful as per his own choice. The petitioner in bona fide manner marked "1" in the column of the paper code in the OMR sheet of General Hindi subject and due to the said technical reason, the said OMR sheet of the petitioner has been rejected though marks of all the subjects were calculated manually. It is further submitted that the petitioner being a SC candidate has obtained total 703 marks in the Mains Examination which is much higher than the cut off marks of the General Candidate i.e., 644 marks. The petitioner has got 51 marks in Hindi, but due to technical mistake of wrong shadowing of OMR sheet, he has been declared unsuccessful. The petitioner also filed representation before the respondents on 16.05.2016 for reconsideration of his case, but no action has been taken till date.

5. Per contra, Mr. Sanjay Piparwal, the learned counsel for the respondent-JPSC submits that JPSC is a constitutional body and it follows the guidelines and instructions issued for conducting the examination and publication of the result and cannot deviate from the same. It is further submitted that in the Admit Card itself it was specifically mentioned that OMR sheet would be processed electronically and OMR scanning machine would reject OMR sheet, in which Roll No., Centre Code, Subject Code and Paper Code are not properly and correctly shadowed. It is also submitted that the petitioner's answers sheet of General Hindi paper was rejected by the OMR scanning machine on account of wrong shadowing of paper code due to which the petitioner was not declared successful in the main examination. It is also submitted that pursuant to the Advertisement No. 06/2013, the names of successful candidates have already been recommended to the State Government and have already been appointed.

6. Having heard the learned counsel for the parties and on going through the documents available on record, it appears that the OMR sheet of General Hindi paper of the petitioner has been rejected on the ground of wrong shadowing of the paper code. I have perused the instructions given in the Admit Card of Mains Examination annexed by the respondent-JPSC as Annexure-E to the counter affidavit. The column No. 4 under the heading of "Instruction for candidates" is relevant for consideration of this case and as such, the same is reproduced hereinbelow:-

4. OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) answer sheet will be processed electronically. As such invalidation of answer sheet due to incomplete/incorrect fillin