BENGALURU: It was literally a slip between the cup and the lip for 362 candidates of 2011 batch who were selected for the post of gazetted probationers by the Karnataka Public Service Commission (KPSC).
Many of the candidates who were present in court on Friday expressed their joy and were ready to knock on the doors of the government to receive their appointment orders.
But their joy ended within few minutes when the division bench restored the interim order restraining the government from issuing appointment orders to them, after the counsel of a candidate who was deprived of an appointment drew the attention of the court on the mass malpractices in the selection process by KPSC.
Earlier, the division bench of Chief Justice Subhro Kamal Mukherjee and Justice P S Dinesh Kumar modified the interim order dated April 5 and asked the government to issue appointment orders to candidates invoking the clause that their appointments will abide by the verdict of the writ petition. But it was then taken back.
The division bench said, “We had passed an order directing the authorities not to give appointment in terms of the order of the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal. An application for vacating the interim order is filed by the state. It is peculiar that instead of supporting their own order dated August 14, 2014, the state wants to issue appointments in terms of the order of the Tribunal. There is largescale malpractice as pointed out by the officers of the CID in the aforementioned report.”
The bench further added, “If the appointments are made to the candidates, who have been selected by the tainted selectors, that would prejudice to the institution. We, therefore, are not inclined to vacate the interim order passed on April 5, 2014. ”
The state government received an information that there was largescale malpractice in the recruitment process of the Gazetted Probationers Group A and B for the year 2011 by the KPSC. An enquiry was conducted by the Criminal Investigation Department, which submitted a report on September 10, 2013.
The CID report revealed that the members of the KPSC demanded money from the candidates and marks of several candidates were manipulated. Pursuant to that report, the government issued an order on August 14, 2014, directing closure of the recruitment process for 2011.