Hundreds of Candidates who sat for the Meghalaya Civil Service (MCS) exams a year ago are calling on the Meghalaya Public Service Commission (MPSC) to immediately declare the results now that a court case restricting the declaration of the results has been disposed off.
The Meghalaya High Court finally settled a case filed by some candidates, blocking the declaration of the results of the MCS exams held January 2020, but inexplicably the MPSC is still dithering over it even with the green signal from the court.
576 candidates who had appeared for the MCS exams in January 2020 have been impatiently waiting for the court case to be settled for the past 12 months now that the High court gave its judgment on January 27, 2021 by Justice H S Thangkhiew, they had expected the MPSC understand the urgency and declare the long awaited results without much ado.
“We don’t understand why the MPSC is still not declaring our results. The High court has concluded the case filed by some candidates in 2018. The honorable HC finally decided not to interfere with the MCS exam results. Therefore the MPSC is free to declare the result at any time but I do not understand why despite being unshackled it is still delaying like this,” said one of the candidates speaking to the Highland Post.
“The MPSC should understand that we the candidates cannot wait a single day longer. We have been dragged into a situation not of our making and we are stuck, being neither here nor there after sitting for the MCS exams, then the results being held up, we could neither go forward or backward. It is our right to know the results immediately,” said another. Whatever the results they individually get, they felt it will be a closure to this chapter and then they can get on with their lives, they said.
The original advertisement in 2017 had said the exams were held for 38 vacancies. But since that was nearly four years ago the number of vacancies have grown and the government of Meghalaya needs to declare the vacancies.
Some are not even sure what will happen even if they passed because they would be over-aged for the subsequent personal interviews. “We candidates cannot be held ransom to a dispute in which we are not a party” said another.
The delay in declaration of the MCS mains is because six candidates had a dispute with the MPSC’s methods of selection and procedure adopted in declaring the successful candidates eligible to sit for the Main Examinations.
The prayer of the writ petitioners as made out is for setting aside the impugned notification dated 05.10.2018 whereby 576candidates were declared to be qualified to sit for the Main Examinations, to call for the records of all the 576 selected candidates who were successful in the Preliminary Examination, to direct the respondents (MPSC) to prepare fresh selection list by adhering to the examination plan and to declare the resolution dated 22.10.2018 as illegal and arbitrary.
Then a single bench stayed the process but a Division Bench allowed the process to continue till the main case is disposed off. The petition even reached the Supreme Court.
It is however to be noted that the case put up by the petitioners did subsequently come up with concrete challenges to the MPSC methods but because these were not included in the original petition and neither did they take the chance given by the court to amend their petition and include them. Instead they only filed an affidavit.
In fact the court in its ruling said “Without doubt, the subsequent points raised such as (i) there was no official notification that the respondents had decided to amend the method of selection whereby they introduced minimum qualifying marks of 35 per cent in Paper-II and that the aggregate marks secured in Paper-I and Paper-II would be calculated and considered for the purpose of cutoff marks. (ii) 156 (One Hundred Fifty-Six) candidates whose total marks after tabulation of Paper-I and Paper-II, were less than the marks obtained by some of the writ petitioners, were permitted to sit for the Main Examinations held on 18.01.2020. (iii) though the advertisement had proclaimed that the reservation of vacancies would be as per Government Policy, separate cutoff marks to qualify for the Main Examinations for different categories was applied by the respondents, are germane and vital in the larger perspective which governs the conduct of such selection processes, and beg for answers, but these issues cannot however, be taken cognizance of, and adjudicated upon in the present proceedings, as they were not part of the original pleadings or brought by amendment by adoption of proper procedure, but had been brought on record by way of an additional affidavit.
In plain language, legal experts say that it means that the MPSC roused up a controversy by making a fresh rule after the preliminary exams were held, a regime of different cut off marks for the Khasi and Garo candidates. But as per the judgement, this point was not properly put up in the writ petition.
