High Court stays Group II recruitments

Hyderabad: The High Court at Hyderabad has temporarily stayed the process of Group II appointments in Telangana following writ petitions filed alleging loopholes in selection process and short listing of non-qualified candidates.

Justice M S Ramachandra Rao passed these orders on Monday directing the Telangana State Public Service Commission not to undertake any work regarding Group II appointment process for a period of three weeks. He also directed the Commission to file a detailed counter affidavit in these writ petitions by three weeks.

Senior counsel M Surender Rao appearing on behalf of V Ramachandra Reddy of Hyderabad and 14 others and counsel B Rachna appearing on behalf of P Sricharan Das and 20 others submitted to the court that the TSPSC violated its own regulations regarding evaluation of OMR answer sheets and gave scope for irregularities.

They cited how those who had over-written or used whitener on OMR answer sheets have been selected in the merit list. Ten such candidates had approached the High Court seeking a direction to allow their answer sheets to be evaluated despite they over-writing or using whitener.

Their petition was dismissed by the High Court that clearly stated that it was in violation of TSPSC regulations in this regard. Despite this judgment, those ten candidates’ names figured in the merit list announced by the TSPSC.

The counsels brought to the notice of the court further irregularities in the selection process like not sticking to the jumbling process in evaluation and so on. Taking into account these submissions, the judge stayed the process of selection for three weeks and directed the TSPSC to file a detailed counter-affidavit within that period of time and adjourned the case.