HC refers OCS-2011 exam case back to SAT for fresh decision

Quashing an order of the State Administrative Tribunal on the 2011 Odisha Civil Service examination, the Orissa High Court today referred back the matter to the tribunal for fresh adjudication by a division bench.
The high court also asked the tribunal to dispose of the matter preferably within three months.
The SAT on August 26 last year had quashed the results of the OCS 2011 preliminary examination and directed the Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) to publish fresh result after getting rid of faulty grace marks awarded to certain aspirants.
Since the main exams were scheduled to begin from September 1, OPSC had approached the high court challenging the SAT order. The high court in an interim direction had stayed the operation of tribunal order and had allowed the OPSC to go ahead with the main exams according to schedule.

Delivering its final verdict on OPSC's petition, the high court bench of justices Pradeep K Mohanty and Biswajit Mohanty today also directed the commission to provide the list of all successful students who qualified in the preliminary examination so that they could be made respondents when the matter is freshly adjudicated by the tribunal.
The high court, also expressing displeasure over the irregularities in holding the state civil service examinations, directed the Odisha government to ensure that the examinations to recruit administrative officers are held regularly to fill up the vacancies arising every year.
It may be mentioned here that following a lot of hiccups, the OPSC had conducted the OCS-2011 preliminary examinations in January 2014 after the advertisement was made in October 2011 to fill up vacancies created in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.

From over 50,000 aspirants, at least 5,823 had qualified in the preliminary examination and a little over 3,000 appeared for the main examinations, which were held last September.