Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) has politely snubbed the observations expressed by the Government appointed panel working on domicile policy citing legal issues involved. The Commission against the suggestion thrown at it to abide by the Cabinet’s call blindly has decided to stick to the legal opinion expected to arrive to it in a “couple of days”.
The stiff stand has come following the domicile panel pushing it to follow the Cabinet decision bringing down cut-off marks substantially which would pave the way for nearly 34,000 examinees to take the Mains examination.
“JPSC is an autonomous body. We have acted as per the rules furnished to us by the Personnel Department which stipulated to declare 15 times more results than the actual vacancy category wise. The result was published based on that and later amended on the instructions of the High Court. Now, the Government says to alter with the benchmark once again. That certainly attracts legal opinion before moving forward which we have sought,” said Jagjit Singh, Secretary of JPSC on Thursday.
The Cabinet had decided to bring down minimum marks up to 40 per cent for the General, 36.5 per cent for OBC, 34 per cent for Extremely Backward classes and 32 per cent for the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and women. Following the communication made to it by the Personnel Department, the JPSC has reached out to former Advocate General AK Sinha who is legal advisor of the Commission.
The domicile panel citing rules in this regard with the states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh etc had pressed the Commission during a meeting to go on publishing the revised result straightway. “We in the meeting made it clear to the officials of the Commission and also apprised the Personnel Department of the attitude of the JPSC overlooking the decisions made by the Cabinet. It is not proper on their part to do vetting of the Cabinet’s decision,” said member of the panel Radha Krishna Kishore.
Moreover, the JPSC is no mood to succumb. “If we do that it would bring further troubles for us since the result published was as per the directions of the High Court. Rule of the game cannot be changed all the time. We are expecting the legal opinion in a couple of days which would be placed before the Commission members for a final decision,” said the Secretary.
The Commission is also against the argument that if reservation criteria is not followed in the PT exam, which is the case right now, then how it can be done in the Mains. “When we are going with 15-times more results over and above the vacancy for each category then there is no question of doing injustice with anyone. Anyway, we have been following the guidelines provided to us by the Government,” added he.