(1.) THIS petition has been preferred by these three petitioners, seeking appointment to the post of Sub Inspector in Central Police Organisations (CPOs) pursuant to the advertisement published by the respondent No. 2 in the Employment Newspaper of 9th October 2010, whereby they invited applications from Indian citizens desirous of seeking appointment to the post of Sub Inspector in CPOs. The petitioners being eligible had submitted their respective applications for the said examination in the category of OBC. All these petitioners were declared successful as per the merit list drawn by the respondent No. 2 on the basis of the aggregate marks obtained by them in the written examination, physical endurance test and the interview. As averred in the petition, petitioner No.1 had secured 223 marks, petitioner No.2 had secured 219.50 marks and petitioner No.3 had secured 214.50 marks and were placed at S.No.1608, 1633 and 1493 respectively according to their roll numbers, in the list of successful candidates.
(2.) THE grievance of the petitioners is that the candidates in the OBC category who had secured lesser marks than these petitioners were finally selected and were recommended for appointment to the said post but the names of these petitioners were missing from the final list, despite their having secured higher marks vis ƒ -vis the last candidate in the category of OBC recommended for appointment in the CPOs. Enumerating the details of male candidates category wise and force wise, the last selected OBC male candidate under BSF had secured 193.75; 223 in CISF; 195.25 in CRPF; 206.75 in ITBP; and 195.75 marks in SSB. With the help of these details, the learned counsel for the petitioners submits that these petitioners have secured higher marks than the last OBC candidates selected in these para military forces.
(3.) ON the contrary, the stand of the Respondents is that these petitioners had not filled up the preference column in the application form and thus failed to exercise their clear option to seek appointment to the post of Sub -Inspector in a particular CPO, although this was clearly indicated in the instructions given in the advertisement. It is also the stand of the Respondents that the indication by the candidates was necessary in order to ascertain the allocation to the post for which the candidate was entitled to, as per their option and also considering their merit and the preference for CPO indicated by them. Respondents also took a stand that after the respondent No. 2 had finalised the select list, the unfilled vacancies were still there, therefore in the public interest the decision to fill the unfilled vacancies even from the lot of non selected candidates (because of their not indicating any option or invalid or incomplete option for CPOs in the relevant column of the form) was taken. It is also the stand of the Respondents that they had released the revised list of 68 such candidates out of which 58 were male and 10 were females. It is also the stand of the Respondents that there were only 58 unfilled vacancies for male candidates against the unreserved vacancies and all the 58 candidates who were selected from the unreserved category were higher in merit than the marks secured by petitioner Nos. 2 and 3 and so far as petitioner No.1 is concerned, he was over -age to the vacancy under the unreserved category.