Allahabad High Court: In a case, wherein the candidature of a candidate who was successful in the prelims of UP Judicial Service Civil Judge (Junior Division) Examination, 2022 was rejected by the Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (‘UPPSC’), the division bench of Saumitra Dayal Singh and Rajendra Kumar-IV, JJ. passed an interim order whereby petitioner was provisionally permitted to appear in mains examination.
In this case, the petitioner, while filling up the form for preliminary examination, by mistake applied as ‘Dependent of Freedom Fighter’ (“DFF”) though she belongs to Economically Weaker Section (“EWS”) category. Upon qualifying for the preliminary examination, she realised her mistake and tried to fill up the form as an EWS category candidate. As far as the DFF, she sought correction in the application, which has been rejected.
The Court relied on Note 6 of Clause 7 pertaining to reservation under Advertisement No. A-5/E-1/2022, dated 10-12-2022, and said that the Commission may not have cancelled the petitioner’s candidature as she did not make any false or misleading claim as may invite action under Sub-Clause 18 of Clause 11 of the above advertisement.
The Court noted that the petitioner has obtained more than the cut off marks under EWS category.
The Court said that since the examination is to be held from 23-05-2023 onwards, as an interim measure, the Commission would allow the petitioner to appear in the examination provisionally subject to the final outcome of the present writ petition. However, the final result of the petitioner may not be declared except with leave of the Court.
Further, the Court said that as the issue involved is purely legal, the Commission has been granted two weeks’ time to file a reply and the petitioner may file a rejoinder affidavit within one week thereafter.
The matter will next be taken up on 10-07-2023 in the top ten cases.
[Pankhudi Agarwal v State of UP, 2023 SCC OnLine All 177, Order dated 22-05-2023]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
Counsel for Petitioner: Advocate Prabhav Srivastava;
Counsel for Respondent: Chief Standing Counsel M.N. Singh.