Results of the Madhya Pradesh State Services Examination (SSE) 2019 have been cancelled by the state's High Court on Thursday, April 7. The MP Public Service Commission (MPPSC) was in the process of conducting interviews of candidates selected from the Mains round.
In its 89-page order, the Bench, consisting of Justices Sujoy Paul and Dwarkadhish Bansal, declared that the MP government's rule restricted reserved category candidates from being selected in unreserved seats despite getting equivalent marks. The rule was amended by the MP government in February 2020, creating separate category-wise merit lists of the candidates who qualified for the exam. This decision was challenged in the High Court by 60 MPPSC aspirants.
Despite the matter being in court already, the MPPSC had proceeded with the admission process as per the amended rules. "The court held that the February 2020 rules brought of the MP government were in violation of the Indra Sawhney judgment of Supreme Court (of 1992) where it was clearly mentioned that the meritorious students of reserved category shall be migrated to open category seats," said Rameshwar Singh Thakur, one of the advocates representing nearly 60 petitioners in the matter, according to a report by IANS.
The MPPSC, in November 2019, had advertised 571 vacancies including those of posts in state Administrative and Police services, Finance and Revenue Departments and others. After the preliminary results, an objection was taken to the fact that the MPPSC had issued a list of 3,613 successful candidates in the General category for 137 vacancies, far exceeding the rule of '15 times the seats'. Later, while declaring the Mains results, the MPPSC amended the number of unreserved vacancies to 203 and the total number of vacancies to 637.
