Bhubaneswar: The Orissa High Court today upheld the merit list of 1104 candidates published by the Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) for the Assistant Section Officer (ASO) recruitment exam.
Hearing the case, a division bench of the High Court also directed for resumption of the selection process.
“We apprised the High Court that the OPSC has the power to shortlist the candidates. The commission can either fix subject-wise qualifying marks or aggregate qualifying marks as per its decision. The same was mentioned in the advertisement for the recruitment exam,” the lawyer appearing for the OPSC said while speaking to media persons.
Earlier, a single bench of the High Court had stayed the selection process.
Notably, the recruitment exam was conducted on 27 August 2022 while the results were declared on 7 November 2022.
Some candidates had moved the High Court alleging irregularities in the examination. The controversy sparked over introduction of ‘qualification mark rule’ by the OPSC during the process of determining the merit list. The new rule requires candidates to attain a minimum score in each subject, known as the sectional cut-off.
Applicants had raised complaints alleging that the OPSC did not mention the new qualifying mark rule in its initial advertisement and instead introduced it after the completion of the written exams.
