SC notice to govt, OPSC on ASO recruitment process

Cuttack: The Supreme Court on Friday issued notices to the state government and Odisha Public Service (OPSC) on a petition challenging an Orissa high court order regarding the process adopted for recruitment of 796 assistant section officers (ASO)s in Group B posts in the Odisha Secretariat Service.The two-judge bench of Justice J K Maheswari and Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia issued the notices following a petition filed by Rajat Kumar Mishra, who was not in the list of selected candidates notified by OPSC after the written examination. The state and OPSC have four weeks to respond.Initially, Mishra and four others had challenged in high court the introduction of cut-off marks by the OPSC for different subjects, instead of aggregate marks for preparing the merit list after the written examination.Acting on it, Justice A K Mohapatra had ruled that OPSC has no authority to fix subject wise minimum qualifying marks after the written test was over, and scrapped the merit list.Later, a division bench of acting Chief Justice B R Sarangi and Justice M S Raman quashed the single bench’s order following pleas by two candidates whose names figured in the merit list as well as the OPSC.Subsequently, Mishra filed a special leave petition in SC challenging the division bench order. The Supreme Court, while admitting it on Friday, posted the matter after four weeks.As part of the recruitment process, OPSC had conducted a written examination on August 27, 2022 where 1,48,888 candidates had appeared. On November 7, 2022, OPSC shortlisted 1,104 for computer-based skill test, which was approximately 1.5 times of the 796 vacancies advertised.But OPSC has since been embroiled in a legal tangle which has centred around the dispute over whether it has the power to fix subject wise cut-off marks after the written examination got over to shortlist candidates for a skill test.
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