Kerala High Court comes to aid of PSC applicant

Kochi: The Kerala High Court has observed that the Public Service Commission  should not reject an application citing that the name and date written on the photograph uploaded with the PSC's website are not clear. The court also quashed a communication by the PSC rejecting the application and directed it to treat the application as  valid. The court issued the order on a petition filed by M.K. Shobha of Kottayam, who  had applied for selection to the post of clerk/cashier in the district co-operative banks. She applied as per the one-time registration as required by the terms of the notification. The PSC permitted her to attend the written test but the application was rejected later stating that the name and date written on the photograph uploaded on the portal of the PSC were  not legible.

She argued that the candidate has to  write his/her name and date on the photograph to be uploaded while making the one-time online registration. There was no standard prescribed in the notification for the clarity required for the endorsements on the photographs. Hence, the rejection of the application was  arbitrary.

The court accepted the contention and observed, "when a provision was made by the PSC for online registration, it is easy to prevent uploading of photographs which do not contain the required endorsements and photographs with illegible endorsements, by making appropriate provision in the portal.  A large number of web portals have such provisions.  It is on account of the defect in the platform provided by the PSC for online registration that the application with the illegible endorsements on photographs happened to be registered,” it said.