ABHIJIT UDDHAVRAO NIKAM Vs. MAHARASHTRA PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is the common order on the above two petitions. Rule. Rule returnable forthwith. By consent, the petitions are taken up on board for final hearing. Heard the learned counsel.

(2.) In the year 2012, the respondent, M.P.S.C. had undertaken the process for recruitment to the post of Deputy Collector, amongst other, for the State of Maharashtra. The four petitioners herein had applied to the post of Deputy Collector, pursuant to the advertisement issued by the respondent. On 10th June, 2012, they successfully cleared the preliminary examination and appeared for the main examination held on 1st, 2nd and 3rd September, 2012. The main examination consisted of six papers. The first two papers were of languages and the remaining four papers were of General Studies. Each paper for General Studies carried 150 marks and was of objective type. On declaration of results on 20th February, 2013, the petitioners found that their names were not included in the list of successful candidates, qualified for the interview.

(3.) Post-Examination, the respondent discovered that all the four papers for General Studies contained incorrect questions. The number of incorrect questions in the four papers were 2, 4, 11 and 5 respectively. Therefore by way of corrective action, the respondent cancelled the incorrect questions and correspondingly reduced the total number of marks for each of the four papers. The marks for paper No. 1 on exclusion of two questions were reduced to 148. The marks for paper No. 2 were reduced to 146, for paper No. 3 to 139 and for paper No. 4 to 149. This reduction in the total marks for the four papers naturally impacted the number of minimum qualifying marks for clearing the papers. As per the advertisement, the candidates of open category needed to secure a minimum of 48% marks in each paper and those of the reservation category needed to secure a minimum of 40% marks in each paper. With the reduction in the total number of marks for the four papers, the marks required for fulfilling the test of 45% and 40% got reduced as follows: