The Patna High Court

Patna, April 14: A mistake committed by Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) has landed Krishna Kumar Yadav, presently a sub-divisional education officer at Aurangabad, in a long-drawn legal battle to get into Bihar Administrative Service (BAS). Today, he had a reason to rejoice, as the state job panel accepted its fault.

Yadav, who was allotted Bihar Education Service (BES) instead of the BAS because of the commission’s fault in tabulation that fetched him five marks less than others, moved the high court seeking direction to the BPSC to recommend his name for the administrative service by rectifying the anomaly in tabulation.

During a hearing of the case before a bench of Justice Sheema Ali Khan, the commission today filed a counter-affidavit accepting its fault.

The BPSC submitted before the court that it has recommended Yadav’s name for the BAS and now the ball is in general administration department’s court (formerly personnel department) of the state government to appoint him in the BAS category.

The court wanted to know the state government’s stand vis-à-vis Yadav’s case, to which the government said it could not file its reply because the file was not with the state government.

On this, the court observed: “You (state government) could have filed the reply by taking files from other parties. The work which could have been completed or done in a natural course is not even being done by a constitutional body like the commission… If we will not do our job… What would Anna Hazare alone do?”

Yadav had cleared the 45th state civil service exam conducted by the BPSC in 2004. The result was published in 2005, after which he joined the BES on the basis of the rank obtained on 856 marks in the mains examination.

Yadav, who received his marksheet after six-seven months of publication of the result, was surprised to see that there was an error in tabulation of his marks. His total should have been 861 and not 856.

He filed a representation to the BPSC chairman and the secretary to rectify the anomaly in tabulation but the commission did not pay any attention to his complaint.

Appearing for the petitioner, advocate Dilip Kumar Rai submitted that the candidate took the Right to Information (RTI) Act route to know the actual marks he had secured and also the cut-off marks for getting into the BAS.

Rai contended that since BPSC had accepted its fault and has also recommended Yadav’s name for appointment in the BAS, the state government should not delay in delivering justice to the candidate.

After hearing both the parties, the court directed the state government to file its affidavit within four weeks on how much time would it take to act on the commission’s recommendation.

The court scheduled the matter for final disposal on May 11.