‘Can’t change criteria 6 days before interview’: Court to Haryana Public Service panel

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has overturned a decision by the Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) to impose minimum qualifying marks for interviews for recruitment to Assistant Professor positions in state government medical colleges. The court ruled that the HPSC cannot change selection criteria so close to the interview date, as it undermines the agency's credibility.

The HPSC had announced interviews for 189 teaching faculty posts on December 19 and 20, 2022, but just six days prior, on December 13, it added minimum qualifying marks of 50% for general candidates and 45% for reserved category candidates. The petitioners argued that the new criteria were not included in the original advertisement or interview call notices.

Justice Harpreet Singh Brar, in a bench comprising himself, dismissed arguments that setting a minimum interview mark was merely fixing a cut-off, pointing out that the threshold determines whether a candidate can be eliminated from consideration, regardless of aggregate merit. The court also noted that the pre-merit criteria, which accounted for 75 marks, were devised by the Directorate General Medical Education and Research (DGMER), a specialized body responsible for medical education regulation.

The HPSC, the court observed, had merely been tasked with conducting interviews. The court quashed the HPSC's announcement of December 13, 2022, and set aside the December 23 result for candidates who failed to secure the newly prescribed minimum marks. The High Court directed the HPSC to re-evaluate and finalize the selection process based on the original advertisement criteria, calculating aggregate merit out of 100 marks without applying any minimum qualifying cut-off for the viva voce.