Cuttack: OAS and OFS officers recruited in 2010 on the basis of an advertisement of 2006 heaved a sigh of relief on Friday as Orissa High Court dismissed a batch of PILs which were filed challenging the recruitment of Odisha Civil Service (OCS) conducted by Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC).
Delivering the judgement that was reserved since May this year, a division bench of the High Court comprising Chief Justice V Gopala Gowda and Justice B N Mohapatra said the petitions lack merit to be treated as PILs.
Since the questions raised by the petitioners are pertaining to service matters, the High Court observed that there are specific forums to deal with such matters.
Applications pertaining to the same issue are now pending disposal in the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT).
One of the PILs in the HC had stated that the OPSC in an advertisement made in 2006 had invited applications from eligible candidates to fill up a total of 378 Class-II posts in several cadres, including Odisha Administrative Service (OAS) and Odisha Finance Service (OFS).
However, after several hiccups, the recruitment process was completed in 2010 in which the state government gave appointment to 73 successful candidates as OAS (Class-I) and 207 candidates as OFS (Class-I) officers while another 98 candidates were absorbed in other allied cadres as Class-II officers.