The bench of Jharkhand High Court Chief Justice Aniruddha Bose did not stay the process of the contentious sixth JPSC civil services Mains exams that also started the same day at 58 centres in the capital under high security, but ordered the commission to not declare results without the court’s permission.

The court also directed the JPSC to issue public notices in newspapers latest by 31 January so that if examinees had concerns/grievances related to the recruitment process they could approach court. The court directed JPSC to display the notice in its official website. The same notice will be available on the high court website. February 25 has been fixed as the next date of hearing.

The court gave these directives while hearing a petition filed by student Pankaj Pandey who had demanded a review of the exam process and selection criteria.

As soon as hearing started, the court enquired if the Mains exam had started, to which lawyers replied in the affirmative. The first paper had started at 10am.

In reply, the court observed that as the exam process had started, there would be no stay but went on to state that as issues raised in the petition were serious, their hearing would take time.

“Now that the court has put February 25 as next date of hearing, we are very hopeful of regular hearings. The court asked JPSC to issue notice for examinees students to approach the court if they have any grievance to raise. Also the court ordered JPSC to not publish results without the former’s permission,” said R.S. Majumdar who appeared on behalf of the petitioner.

The petitioner claimed the JPSC did not follow rules and regulations during the preliminary examination held over two years ago. Though the number of candidates called for Mains must be 15 times the total number of vacant seats, this time the number of students is 106 times higher than vacancies, he said. He explained this was owing to the fact that JPSC amended the results of preliminary examinations many times. So, finally, 34,634 students qualified for Mains (for 326 posts).

Advocate-general Ajeet Kumar appeared on behalf of the government while Sanjay Piparwal represented JPSC at the hearing.

Some 27,000 candidates finally filled the forms of the exam. According to a JPSC official who did not come on record, around 70 per cent aspirants appeared for the first paper of the Mains exam on Monday.