ASHOK KUMAR YADAV STATE OF HARYANA D R CHAUDHARY MEMBER Vs. STATE OF HARYANA:SUBHASH CHANDER SHARMA:ASHOK KUMAR YADAV

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These appeals by special leave are directed against a judgment of the Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashing and setting aside certain selections made by the Haryana Public Service Commission to the Haryana Civil Service (Executive) and other allied services. The judgment in part proceeds on surmises and conjectures and has made certain uncharitable observations against the Chairman and Members of the Haryana Public Service Commission without any warrant and hence it is necessary to set out the facts giving rise to the appeals in some detail.

(2.) Sometime in October 1980 the Haryana Public Service Commission invited applications for recruitment to 61 posts in Haryana Civil Service (Executive) and other allied Services. The procedure for recruitment was governed by the Punjab Civil Service (Executive Branch) Rules, 1930 as applicable in the State of Haryana, Rule 9, Clause (1) of these Rules provided that a competitive examination shall be held at any place in Haryana in each year in or about the month of January for the purpose of selection by competition of as many candidates for the Haryana Civil Service (Executive) and other allied services as the Governor of Haryana may determine and such competitive examination shall be held in accordance with the Regulations contained in Appendix I to the Rules. Rule 10 laid down the conditions for eligibility to appear at the competitive examination but we are not concerned with these conditions of eligibility in the present appeals, Regulation I in Appendix I provided that the competitive examination shall include compulsory and optional subjects and every candidate shall take all the compulsory subjects and not more than three of the optional subjects, provided that ex-servicemen shall not be required to appear in the optional subjects. The compulsory subjects included English Essay, Hindi, Hindi Essay and General Knowledge carrying in the aggregate 400 marks and there was also viva voce examination which was compulsory and which carried 200 marks and each optional subject carried 100 marks. Vide Regulation 5. The result was that the written examination carried an aggregate of 700 marks for candidates in general and for ex-serviceman, it carried an aggregate of 400 marks while in case of both, the viva voce examination carried 200 marks. Some argument has been turned on the true interpretation of Regulation 3 and hence it would be desirable to set it out in extenso. It reads as follows:

(3.) Since all the writ petitions raised substantially the same issues and the pleadings in the writ petitions also followed substantially the same pattern, one writ petition, namely, Civil Writ Petition 2495 of 1983 was treated as the main writ petition and the principal arguments were advanced in that writ petition. It would therefore be convenient to refer only to Civil Writ Petition 2495 of 1983 and trace the course followed by it in the High Court because whatever we say in regard to this writ petition would apply equally to the other writ petitions. So far as Civil Writ Petition No. 2495 of 1983 is concerned, the State of Haryana filed its counter-affidavit in reply to the writ petition and so also did the Haryana Public Service Commission. The five selected candidates who were impleaded as respondents Nos. 6 to 10 also filed their counter-affidavit joining issue with the petitioners. We do not propose to set out here at this stage the averments made in the writ petition or the answer to those averments made on behalf of the respondents, because we shall have to refer to them in some detail when we deal with the arguments advanced on behalf of the parties. Suffice it to state that the averments made in the writ petition and the answer sought to be given on behalf of the respondents raised issues of considerable importance affecting not only the Haryana Public Service Commission but also all other State Public Service Commissions and calling for formulation of principles and norms which should guide all State Public Service Commissions in the discharge of their functions. We may briefly set out the grounds on which the petitioners challenged the validity of the selections made by the Haryana Public Service Commission.