The Orissa High Court on Friday upheld the merit list of the 1,104 candidates published by the Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) for the Assistant Section Officer (ASO) recruitment examination.
Hearing the case, a Division Bench of the court also directed for resumption of the ASOs selection process.
“We appraised the High Court that the OPSC has the power to shortlist the candidates. The commission can either fix subject-wise qualifying marks or aggregate qualifying marks as per its decision. The same was mentioned in the advertisement for the recruitment exam,” the lawyer appearing for the OPSC said while speaking to mediapersons.
Earlier, a Single Bench of the High Court had stayed the selection process.
Notably, the recruitment exam was conducted on August 27, 2022 while the results were declared on November 7, 2022.
Some candidates had moved the High Court alleging irregularities in the examination. A controversy arose over introduction of ‘qualification mark rule’ by the OPSC during the process of determining the merit list. The new rule requires candidates to attain a minimum score in each subject, known as the sectional cutoff.
Applicants had raised complaints alleging that the OPSC did not mention the new qualifying mark rule in its initial advertisement and, instead, introduced it after the completion of the written exams.
