Cuttack: The Orissa High Court on Tuesday declared the appointment of 378 OCS officers valid after it quashed the previous order of the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT) in its final verdict today.
Petitioner Surabhi Mohanty had alleged that OPSC, in a 2006 advertisement, invited applications from eligible candidates to fill up 378 Class II posts in several cadres, including OAS and OFS, but later appointed selected candidates in Class I category. The recruitment process was completed in 2010.
Stating that the candidates could not be employed as Class I officers as they gave the test for Class-II posts, Mohanty termed the entire selection process as illegal and urged SAT to quash the appointments.
In June 2014, the high court had stayed the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT) order in which it had scrapped the OCS recruitment terming it unconstitutional. A division bench of SAT comprising Justice Nityananda Prusty and administrative member S N Das had declared all 378 appointments in OCS-2006 void for alleged irregularities. The bench had said in its verdict that it violates the Sec 14 and 16 of Constitution.
Challenging the SAT order, the state government and many candidates had moved High Court for relief.
It may be mentioned here that the OPSC, in an advertisement published in 2006, had invited applications from eligible candidates to fill up a total of 378 Class-II posts in several cadres, including Odisha Administrative Service (OAS) and Odisha Finance Service (OFS).
However, the recruitment process was completed in 2010 in which the state government gave appointment to 73 successful candidates as OAS (Class-I) and 207 candidates as OFS (Class-I) officers while another 98 candidates were absorbed in other allied cadres as Class-II officers.
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