Manipur HC Quashes Manipur Public Service Commission Exam, 2016; Orders CBI Enquiry

The Manipur High Court on Friday quashed the Manipur Public Service Commission Exam, 2016 and ordered an independent CBI enquiry into the conduct of the Manipur Public Service Commission (MPSC) in conducting the said examination. The order was passed by a division bench of Justice Lanusungkum Jamir and Justice Kh. Nobin Singh in various writ petitions and writ appeals filed by students affected by alleged anomalies, irregularities and illegalities committed by the Respondent MPSC, in the process of conducting the said exam. In this behalf, the high court said, "MPSC has no intention to conduct any examination in a fair and just manner. It had, in the present case, miserably failed to discharge its duties and functions as mandated in the Constitution of India. It would like to continue holding examinations, only in name, with a half baked rules so that it could manipulate it." In the present case, the Appellant-students had assailed the order of a single judge who had dismissed their petitions challenging the validity and correctness of the said examination, based on the report of a Commission appointed by the court itself. The said Commission, lead by the Director of the Manipur Judicial Academy, was given the authority to examine all the documents and papers and to examine such persons, officials or evaluators involved in the entire exercise of evaluation, beginning with codification upto the stage of tabulation and declaration of the results. The Commission was also given the authority to have access to the answer scripts of all the candidates as it might consider appropriate. The single judge in his order stated that the Commission had been appointed for the limited purpose of ascertaining prima facie existence of patent illegality or irrationality in the functioning of the MPSC. Since the Commission was satisfied with the arrangements made, steps taken and processes adopted by the MPSC in the conduct of examination, the question of ordering a full scale and extensive enquiry did not arise. The Appellants alleged before the high court that the aforesaid Commission had failed to hold a judicious enquiry inasmuch as the same was conducted one-sidedly with prior intention to prove that the conduct of the Examination was carried out without any unholy haste on the part of the MPSC. It was further alleged that the Commission never made an effort to verify the correctness of the statements made by the MPSC's officials by way of cross checking or by way of examining all the important examiners. Thus, it was asserted in light of the ruling in Avinash C. & Ors. v. State of Karnataka & Ors., (2018) 6 SCC 614, that the single judge ought not have passed the impugned order merely by relying on the Committee's report. The Appellants thereby prayed for setting aside of the impugned order and quashing of the MPSC Exam, 2016. The Appellants also sought constitution of a High Level Probe Committee to investigate into the manner in which the Main Examination, 2016 was conducted by the MPSC. Considerably, the examination was challenged on the following grounds: Despite written instructions contained in the answer sheet that "no extra sheets will be provided at any circumstance", many candidates were provided with extra sheets on the basis of alleged oral announcement that extra sheets would be provided to those who ask for it. It was contended that oral instructions cannot override the written instructions.Examination of the last paper was concluded on 23.09.2016 and the result thereof was declared within 11 days on 04.10.2016. Further discounting the number of days for collecting, coding, decoding and scrutinizing and the number of holidays, the number of working days actually available for checking/ evaluating the answer scripts is about 5 days only. It was contended that completion of the tedious and time consuming process of evaluating answer scripts in such a shot span of time depicted the process' unreasonableness and raised suspicions as to its legitimacy.The advertisement was ambiguous with regards the standard of the paper on General English and it was difficult for students to fathom the standard that MPSC was expecting.The qualifying marks for screening candidates in General English for the Main Examination 2016 was determined at 40% whereas UPSC has fixed the qualifying marks at only 25%. Thus the provision was contrary to the decision of UPSC as well as the high court's decision in H. Bobby Sharma v. MPSC, WP(C) No.150 of 2013. Moreover, it was alleged that the 40% criteria was notified on the official website of MPSC only on the day of commencing the Main Examination 2016, thus depriving the candidates an opportunity to prepare for the General English papers better and prioritize their strategy for preparation.MPSC did not maintain any guidelines for coding, checking, evaluating etc. the answer scripts and these...

Manipur HC Quashes Manipur Public Service Commission Exam, 2016; Orders CBI Enquiry

Akshita Saxena

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