Haryana constables’ recruitment: HC dismisses petitions against selection method

The government had argued that the necessity to adopt a different mode of evaluation arose in the light of large number of applicants 8,25,921 in the case of male candidates against 5,500 advertised posts whereas 2,54,985 applications were received in the category of female constables against 1,100 posts.

The Punjab and Haryana high court has dismissed pleas against recruitment of constables in Haryana.

As many as 7,298 posts of constables, including 5,000 male constables and 1,100 female constables, and remaining of some other categories, were advertised in December 2020. (HT File)

“…the equi-percentile formula is quite accurate as adopted by respondent-Commission (Haryana Public Service Commission) which had otherwise also wide acceptance all over the result where any additional marks are to be added to the written marks, which is also adopted by the UPSC, and in the examination of GATE as well as NEET-PG. In case, for the sake of argument, this formula is discarded, the results of all these examination would be liable to be declared invalid as normalisation is adopted in these examination as well between different subjects to reach a common equi-percentile score,” the bench of justice Sandeep Moudgil said while dismissing at least 62 petitions against the merit list prepared on the basis of equi-percentile formula, a score normalisation tool.

As many as 7,298 posts of constables, including 5,000 male constables and 1,100 female constables, and remaining of some other categories, were advertised in December 2020.

The matter had reached the court in 2021 in which multiple aspirants had challenged the merit list of candidates who applied. It alleged, deviation in preparation of the merit list. Initially, percentile method had been adopted and merit list prepared. But it was subsequently scrapped and changed to equi-percentile score. The pleas alleged changes in the recruitment criterion during the process of recruitment, terming it bad in law. The judgment was pronounced on August 11 and has been made available now.

The government had argued that the necessity to adopt a different mode of evaluation arose in the light of large number of applicants 8,25,921 in the case of male candidates against 5,500 advertised posts whereas 2,54,985 applications were received in the category of female constables against 1,100 posts.

The court observed that the method adopted was “actually the process of evaluation” after giving equal playing-field, ruling out the difficulty levels in various shifts of the question papers before preparing the ranking and selection list. These are technical matters in the academic field, which should not be interfered with by the court unless there is violation of any law, mala-fide or arbitrariness to which the petitioners have failed to establish, it said adding that the equi-percentile formula perfectly calculates the equated marks and always keeps the candidate securing higher raw marks above the candidate securing lesser raw marks in written examination in same set of paper/shift.