DEEPENDRA YADAV Vs. STATE OF MADHYA PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Leave granted only in SLP (C) No. 5817 of 2023.

(2.) One lapse on the part of the State is all it took to generate this litigation, impacting multitudes of job aspirants in the State of Madhya Pradesh. The lapse was the amendment of an existing service rule on 17/2/2020 which was recalled thereafter on 20/12/2021, restoring the rule to its original position, but in the interregnum that amended rule was applied to an ongoing recruitment process. This prompted several challenges before the High Court of Madhya Pradesh at Jabalpur resulting in a spate of orders and directions leading up to these cases before us.

(3.) The Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission (MPPSC) issued an advertisement on 14/11/2019 proposing to select candidates for 571 posts in the State services in accordance with the Madhya Pradesh State Service Examination Rules, 2015 (for brevity, 'the Rules of 2015'). The Rules of 2015 were framed in exercise of power under the proviso to Article 309 of the Constitution of India. The Madhya Pradesh State Service Examination-2019 was scheduled to be held by the MPPSC for filling up these posts, by conducting a preliminary examination followed by the main examination and interviews. The preliminary examination took place on 12/1/2020. The total number of candidates who registered for the preliminary examination stood at 3,64,877 but only 3,18,130 of them actually appeared for the examination. At that stage, on 17/2/2020, Rule 4 of the Rules of 2015 was amended by the State of Madhya Pradesh. Rule 4 , as it stood prior to the amendment and to the extent relevant for the purposes of this adjudication, read as under: