The matter of alleged irregularities in Assistant Section Officers’ (ASO) recruitment examination conducted by the Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) reached the Supreme Court as the apex court admitted a petition in this regard on Friday.

The court, while admitting a petition filed by Rajat Mishra challenging the verdict of the Orissa High Court in the matter, issued notices to the Odisha Government, OPSC and other parties asking them to submit their replies within four weeks.

The next hearing of the case will be held after four weeks.

Earlier, the Orissa High Court had upheld the merit list of 1,104 candidates published by the OPSC for the recruitment exam.

A Division Bench of the High Court had also directed for resumption of the 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 had said.

Notably, the recruitment exam was conducted on August 27, 2022 and the results were declared on November 7, 2022.

Some candidates had moved the High Court alleging irregularities in the exam. The controversy sparked 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 exam.