K K BHATIA Vs. RAJASTHAN PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION

JUDGEMENT

(1.) AS the learned counsel for the petitioners have not pressed some of the facts or grounds on which petitioners K. K. Bhatia and S. C. Sachdev have filed these writ petitions under article 226 of the Constitution, it will be suffi-cient to refer to those facts and grounds which have figured in the controversy before me.

(2.) THE petitioners were appointed as Assistant Engineers under a Survey and Investigation Scheme of the Rajasthan Ground Water Board, by an order of the State Government dated January 16, 1967. THE appointments were ad hoc and temporary and the petitioners took over as Assistant Engineers on March 13, 1967, THE Rajasthan Public Service Commission, respondent No. 1, hereinafter referred to as "the Commission", issued advertisement No. 6/70-71 dated June 12,1970 inviting applications for 16 posts of Assistant Engineers in the Rajasthan Ground water Board in accordance with the Rajasthan Ground Water Board Service Rules, 1969, hereinafter referred to as "the Rules". THE petitioners applied for those posts and appeared for interview before the Commission. THEy were however not selected and intimation Ex. 1 dated February 26, 1971 was sent to them to this effect by the Secretariat of the Commission. THE Commission selected respondents Nos. 3 to 19 for appointment as Assistant Engineers. THE petitioners have challenged those selections and their own rejection by the Commission, inter alia, on the grounds that (i) all the members of the Commission did not participate at the interviews which were held for selecting the candidates, (ii) "even the experts assisting the Commission were different on these different dates." and (iii. the re-commendation of members of the Commission who interviewed the candidates was not circulated to the other members of the Commission before forwarding it to the State Govern-ment.THE petitioners have prayed, inter alia, for a direction to the State government not to give effect to the recommendation of the Commission and not to appoint respondents Nos. 3 to 19 as Assistant Engineers.

(3.) IT has next been argued by Mr. Joshi that the interviews which were held by the Chairman and one member of the Commission were vitiated because they associated certain experts with them, and went on changing these experts from time to time. This argument is however not tenable for two reasons. Firstly, the petitioners have not taken the plea that it was not permissible for the Chairman and the member to secure the presence of the experts at the time of the interviews, so that the Commission had no opportunity of explaining the facts and circumstances under which it was considered necessary to secure the presence of the experts and, secondly, it has not been contended or established that the experts sat as examiners along with the Chairman and the member and had the authority of selecting and rejecting candidates. The interviews were held for the purpose of examining candidates for recruitment to a technical service, and there is nothing unusual or wrong if some experts were required to be present for the purpose of advising the Chairman and the member whether a candidate gave correct answers to the questions which were put to him, for it may well be that a candidate may give a somewhat technical answer to an otherwise simple question So long as the result of the examination rested with the Chairman and the member of the Commission, the mere presence of different experts on different dates would not matter for the simple reason that they were not the examiners.