SUSHEELA Vs. KERALA PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These three cases are being disposed of by this common judgment since the issue involved in them is common and identical. The question that arises for consideration is whether the Kerala Public Service Commission was justified in invalidating the answer scripts of the two appellants and the petitioner on the ground that they had failed to comply with the instructions issued by the Commission for filling up the answer scripts. To put it a little more explicitly, the appellants and the petitioner failed to enter the Alpha Code in their answer booklets by bubbling the appropriate circles.

(2.) Appellants had appeared for the written test conducted by the Commission for selection to the post of Cashier-cum-Clerk in Kottayam and Kollam District Co-operative Banks respectively. It is beyond controversy that both appellants had failed to enter the Alpha Code in their answer booklets. Similarly, petitioner in the captioned writ petition had also failed to enter the Alpha Code while writing the written test conducted by the Commission for selection to the post of Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering under the Technical Education Department.

(3.) The Commission invalidated the answer scripts of the above three candidates. The common contention raised by these candidates is that their answer scripts ought to have been evaluated by the Commission ignoring the inadvertent mistake committed by them.