Point of Law: Service Law - Recruitment process - As per new recruitment policy, existing practice in case of Group-A, B and C posts to be filled up through TPSC would continue with a rider that weightage for oral interview should exceed 10% of total marks.

JUDGMENT :

Akil Kureshi, J.

This Appeal is filed by the State Government to challenge the judgment of the learned Single Judge dated 02.03.2020 passed in W.P. (C) No.1097 of 2018.

2. This litigation has long history. Briefly stated the facts are as under:

Under an advertisement No.05/2016, the Tripura Public Service Commission (“TPSC”, for short) notified 65 vacancies in different disciplines for the post of Lecturers, Diploma Level Technical Institution, Government of Tripura and invited applications from eligible candidates. All the respondents herein, the original petitioners before the Single Judge had necessary educational and other qualifications for the posts in question. They applied in response to the said advertisement. Written examination was conducted on 18.07.2017 and 20.07.2017. The result of the written examination was published on 12.10.2017. All the petitioners succeeded in the written examination and they were therefore, called for oral interviews, which were conducted in November, 2017.

3. In the meantime, Jayanta Choudhury petitioner No.2 herein had filed W.P. (C) No.1404 of 2017 before the High Court and questioned the decision of the TPSC to apply the procedure laid down in Memorandum dated 30.03.2017 for oral interviews. As per this Memorandum, for nonscheduled examinations personality test would consist of 100 marks to be divided into two parts i.e. 50 marks for academic performance and 50 marks for viva-voce. The contention of the petitioner Jayanta Choudhury was that allotment of marks of academic performance was impermissible.

4. By an order dated 10.11.2017 while issuing notice on the said petition of Jayanta Choudhury, learned single judge restrained the TPSC and the State Government from publishing the outcome of the selection process without permission of the Court. Thus, pending the said petition of Jayanta Choudhury, the interviews as scheduled were conducted. The results were withheld.

5. This writ petition of Jayanta Chaudhuri came to be disposed of by the learned Single Judge by a judgment dated 29.06.2018 holding that certain clauses of the said O.M. dated 30.03.2017 are irreconcilable. The following directions were therefore issued:

“24. In view of what has been observed and what has been found from the records produced that the TPSC-respondents followed the procedure as engrafted in clause-2 of the said memorandum dated 30.03.2017. They shall, as consequence of the observation aobe, revisit their recommendation by cancelling what they have made up and thereafter shall make the necessary recommendation by following the notification dated 29.11.2007 for the post of Lecturer, Diploma Level in the Technical Institutions in Tripura.

In terms of the above, this writ petition stands allowed.”

6. The record would suggest that the TPSC and the State Government accepted the decision of the learned Single Judge and the said judgment therefore achieved finality without further challenge. Since after the decision of the Single Judge in case of Jayanta Choudhury (supra), there was no further movement on part of the TPSC, the petitioners issued a notice to the respondents on 15.10.2018 requesting to complete the selection process as per the judgment of the High Court. Since despite this notice, the selection process was not undertaken further, the petitioners filed the present petition W.P. (C) No.1097 of 2018 and prayed for a direction to the respondents to complete the selection process as per the decision of this Court in case of Jayanta Choudhury (supra).

7. In the said petition, the State Government and TPSC appeared and filed replies. TPSC in its reply dated 21.12.2018, took the stand that the General Administration Department of Government of Tripura had issued a Memorandum dated 14.03.2018 communicating that the State Government has decided that the recruitment processes of the Government shall be reviewed and pending such review all ongoing selection and recruitment processes under the Government would b