RTI exposes gaffe in recruitments
Sidharth
by Rakesh Lohumi, Tribune News Service
Shimla, December 14
Is it possible to select a candidate for any post without preparing a
merit list of candidates?
The answer is "yes", if one goes by the information supplied by the
Himachal Pradesh High Court under the Right to Information Act
regarding direct recruitment of additional district and sessions
judges in 2007.
An application was filed in this regard by RTI activist Dev Ashish
Battacharya in which he had sought details of the marks obtained by
the selected candidates and also the names and marks obtained by the
first five candidates in the merit list in the preliminary, main and
viva voce examinations.
As per information provided by the state public information officer of
the high court, only one candidate was finally selected to the cadre
of the district and additional district judge. The candidate was from
the general category.
However, regarding the names and marks obtained by the first five
candidates, he states that the organisation and administration branch
of the high court has reported that "no such detail of first five
candidates has been prepared".
The selected candidate had obtained 163 marks out of 300 marks in the
preliminary examination and his score in the paper of criminal laws
was only 21 out of 100 marks. The detail regarding marks obtained in
viva voce reads: "average marks out of aggregate of 300 marks X 9 =
207.22 or 207 marks".
The high court had advertised two vacancies, one for ST candidates and
the other for general category candidates. In all, 171 candidates,
including nine ST candidates, appeared in the preliminary examination.
The selected candidate was placed at the 47th place in the list of
candidates declared successful in the preliminary examination. The
rules lay down that a maximum of 35 candidates can be called for the
main examination against a post. It is not clear what criterion was
followed for calling candidates for the main examination and the
interview.
A candidate, Pramod Goyal, who was not called for the interview, had
moved the high court for the re-evaluation of his paper of
constitutional law. The expert who re-evaluated the paper said in his
report that the examiner had been stringent in marking his paper and
that he had done as good as the candidates who had been selected for
the interview. He should be awarded 100 marks instead of 94 like other
selected candidates. While Goyal was called for the interview after
re-evaluation, others whose papers were also subjected to such
"stringent marking" got no such relief.
Bhattacharya points out that the case of Goyal makes it clear that the
criteria for calling candidates for the main examination and for the
interview were different. A candidate securing 21 marks out of 100 in
a paper in the preliminary examination was called for the main
examination (and he eventually got selected), but Goyal, who obtained
94 marks out of 200 in a paper in the main examination in the first
evaluation, was not called for the interview.
The best course, Bhattacharya says, to avoid such controversies is
that institutions like the high court and the Vidhan Sabha, which have
to oversee the functioning of the entire administrative system, should
not get involved in the business of recruitments and, like other
departments, leave it to the state public service commission and the
subordinate services board.