Haryana clerk recruitment exam: High court raps HSSC for lapses in evaluation

The bench of Justice Arun Monga in its detailed order, released on Monday, warned the Commission that in future such mistakes would leave the court with no choice but to impose heavy penal costs, including qua loss of salary to the candidates who unnecessarily suffer for no fault of theirs. The court had pronounced its judgment in the case on April 25.

“This court highly deprecates the apathetic and indifferent approach adopted by the Commission. The Commission is censured to be careful in future,” it said.

Justice Monga, hearing a bunch of petitions against the HSSC, said that for some of the petitioners, it was the second round of litigation. The bench held that as per an order dated November 17, 2020, their case was reconsidered.

However, their claim was rejected again stating that after careful perusal of the result, no fault was found in the impugned result. “It is rather intriguing that in the second round before this court, now a complete somersault has been taken. In the return filed, the commission has instead candidly admitted that yes, indeed, not only have mistakes happened in evaluation of the result, but also a revised key contributed to the wrong evaluation. The scapegoat is thus a software malfunction and not the commission, is the argument. As if the commission is not responsible for the revised answer key and/or the software it got prepared for the examination. Same old nonchalant, shrug it off most casually and lackadaisical approach,” Justice Monga said.

Justice Monga added, “What emerges is that it seems to have become a habit of the Commission to commit such mistakes, given the nature of litigation pending in this court wherein Haryana Staff Selection Commission is directly involved. Each time they come up with some moonshine defense, one illustration is herein itself, that due to the malfunction of the software, the mistake happened on its own and personnel of commission are not responsible. On the contrary, it is no rocket science to observe that apparently preparation of a wrong answer key has nothing to do with the software. It is a clear mistake on the part of the examiner who prepared the answer key.”

“The job of identifying the human resource, including examiner or chief-examiner, is with the commission. The commission ought to take the entire responsibility and must be more careful rather than shifting burden from one shoulder to the other,” it added.

Regarding the costs in the present case, the bench said, “Though the actual expenses borne by the petitioners cannot possibly be awarded, given the large number of petitions. It is but natural that the entire exercise of the evaluation shall now have to be carried out all over again. Resultantly, many would get jobs… while their counterparts have been earning ever since… real losses suffered by the petitioners cannot be computed in terms of money. The costs which may have to be paid will put a colossal burden on the state.”

Justice Monga said that the court was inclined to impose heavy costs, but on repeated requests made by the state counsel the same was not awarded as a one-time measure.