Cuttack, Oct. 30: The high court has given a clean chit to the recruitment process adopted for selecting candidates to the Orissa Judicial Service Cadre this year.

The recruitment conducted by the Orissa State Public Service Commission (OPSC) had come under judicial scrutiny after writ petitions filed in the high court challenged the evaluation of answer scripts of candidates who had appeared for the main exams.

OPSC had undertaken the selection process for appointment against 110 posts sanctioned by the state. The OPSC had first conducted a preliminary exam. Of the 6,000 odd candidates who took the test, 2,045 were declared eligible for the mains. Subsequently, only 69 candidates were declared eligible to appear for the via-voce. One Amaresh Nayak and 14 others had filed petitions seeking judicial intervention alleging “evaluation of answer scripts by inexperienced examiners”. The grievances of the unsuccessful examinees were taken up by for hearing last week. The court sought details on the allegations made by the petitioners but refused to interfere in the selection process at that stage.

The petitions were taken up for analogous hearing yesterday after the OPSC counsel presented details on the norms adopted for the selection process. After hearing the submissions, a two-judge bench of Justice I.M. Quddusi and Justice B.P. Ray rejected the petitions.