Dental Surgeon recruitment case: Orissa High Court directs to display merit list on OPSC website by tomorrow

Cuttack: In the case of alleged irregularities in the recruitment of Dental surgeon, today the revised merit list was submitted to the High Court. OPSC chairman appeared in person in the High Court. The High Court directed to display the list on the OPSC website by tomorrow.

As per reports, the revised list was produced before the High Court today. As asked earlier by the High Court, the OPSC chairman himself appeared in person. The High Court has directed to display the revised merit list on the OPSC website by tomorrow.

Further, the High Court has sought information regarding which candidates have been recruited as per the previous merit list. The state government has been directed to submit information related to the recruitment. The next hearing of the case will be on next Thursday.

It is to be noted that earlier the High Court had come down heavily on the Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) for failing to submit the merit list of the Dental Surgeon recruitment that had earned controversy.

The High Court had directed the OPSC Chairman to appear in person in the next date. The case had been adjourned to today. The Court had directed the Chairman to appear with the complete merit list of the examination.

In 2017/18, there was a case alleging irregularities on the part of OPSC in the recruitment of Dental Surgeons. After the examination for Dental Surgeon, the OPSC published the answer copy. But 6 aspirants complained to the OPSC that the answer copy was incorrect. After that, the OPSC constituted an expert committee and reviewed it.

In 2020, the expert committee submitted a report to the OPSC. It showed that 12 questions had incorrect answers. After that, the OPSC prepared the merit list again in which only one aspirant was considered eligible.

Challenging this, Dr. Sanjay Kumar Panda and Dr. Anil Kumar Sahu approached the High Court. The papers were re-rated on the orders of the High Court’s single Bench judgement.

After this, the aspirants who had secured 184 marks got jobs while the aspirants who had secured 190/192 marks were denied jobs. Hence, Court ordered to give them jobs.

However, the OPSC challenged this order and approached the Division Bench. The Bench of Chief Justice Chakradhari Sharan Singh and Justice Savitri Rath had asked for the complete merit list of OPSC, but OPSC was not able to provide it. The Chief Justice expressed his deep dissatisfaction over this and directed the OPSC chairman to appear in person today along with the revised merit list.

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