OPSC exams as per schedule .

The Hindu,Cuttack.
High Court vacation judge quashes the order of State Administrative Tribunal
Exams to be held from May 27 to June 24
Applications invited to fill 381 posts

It is official now. The Orissa Civil Services (OCS) main examinations will be held as per the schedule. The examinations will be conducted from May 27 to June 24 as announced earlier by the Orissa Public Service Commission (OPSC).The directive came from the vacation judge of the High Court on Friday. Adjudicating over a petition filed by the OPSC, vacation judge Justice M.M. Das quashed the May 15 order of the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT) and made it clear that the said examinations would begin from May 27.The High Court, however, directed the OPSC not to publish the results till the Tribunal disposes of the main cases.

Interim order

“With this direction, it is now implied that only the 3,485 candidates, who have cleared the preliminary examination, will now take the main examination and not 4,572 candidates as directed by the SAT,” said the OPSC counsel Bijay Kumar Das.The SAT last week, while taking up the petitions filed by some unsuccessful candidates, in an interim order asked the OPSC to postpone the examinations by three months.The Tribunal also asked the OPSC to recast the impugned preliminary examination results and publish it afresh allowing candidates 12 times that of the posts advertised for to write the main examination.

The OPSC came out with an advertisement in August 2006 inviting applications for the civil services examination to fill 381 Class-II posts for the Orissa Administrative Service (OAS) and Orissa Financial Service (OFS). The advertisement was given after a gap of six years accommodating the vacancies from 2001 to 2006.Out of some 50,000 candidates who applied, approximately 35,000 of them appeared the preliminary examination that was held in May 2007.After a hue and cry over the reservation percentage for SC, ST and OBC, the preliminary results were published in February this year.

Despite the delay, the OPSC is gearing up to conduct the main examinations from May 27. But it ran into a temporary trouble last week following the SAT ruling. However, following the HC vacation judge’s intervention, the uncertainty over the much-awaited examinations is over and it will now be held as per the schedule.But the matter would be heard again at full length after the vacation was over on June 17 by a regular bench of the High Court, the OPSC counsel said making it clear that the ruling by the vacation judge was only ‘interim’.