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Chandigarh: Rejecting allegations of a “recruitment scam”, mass copying and paper leakage, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has refused to quash the selection process for 184 posts of Senior Assistant-cum-Inspector, holding that “mere suspicion or post-result dissatisfaction of unsuccessful candidates cannot be elevated to the status of proof.” The recruitment in question was initiated through an advertisement issued in 2023.

The allegations had earlier prompted a detailed fact-finding inquiry by a retired High Court judge. The inquiry report, dated June 24, 2025, was placed before the court during the hearing. Endorsing the report in toto, Justice Harpreet Singh Brar observed that the inquiry offered a “methodical and exhaustive rebuttal to each allegation raised by the petitioners.”

Justice Brar noted that the petitioners’ case rested primarily on alleged similarities in answer patterns and the claimed geographical concentration of successful candidates. To verify these allegations, the inquiry officer conducted a comprehensive district-wise, roll number-wise, and examination centre-wise analysis of the top 50 candidates.

The inquiry revealed that 45 of the top 50 candidates belonged to eight districts of Punjab, while the remaining five were from three districts of Haryana. However, these candidates appeared at different examination centres, with no clustering in seating arrangements or roll numbers. The report clearly concluded that “geographical concentration alone, without any evidence of collusion or malpractice, cannot be a ground to vitiate the selection process.”

The court also addressed allegations of age discrimination, claiming that older candidates had been unfairly favoured. The inquiry found that only two of the top 50 candidates were over 40 and had availed of statutory age relaxation in accordance with the rules. The report categorically stated that “merit in a competitive examination is age-neutral, and any presumption otherwise would be violative of Article 14 of the Constitution.”

Referring to the settled legal position, Justice Brar observed that the extreme step of cancelling an entire recruitment process could be taken only where there was “evidence of a systemic taint that goes to the very root of the selection, rendering it impossible to separate the tainted from the untainted.” In the present case, the court held that the petitioners had relied solely on conjecture and surmise, falling far short of the heavy legal burden required for judicial interference.

In response to allegations of favouritism stemming from family connections, the inquiry noted that only two of the top 50 candidates shared the same family. Both were found to possess verifiable academic credentials and merit-based performance. The report recorded that “there is no legal prohibition against relatives appearing in the same examination or qualifying it,” and that the mere existence of a familial relationship cannot, by itself, give rise to an inference of favouritism in the absence of supporting evidence.

The claim of identical wrong answers and mass copying was also rejected after a forensic examination of the original OMR sheets. As per the report, the forensic expert “categorically ruled out common authorship of any two OMR sheets and found no evidence of impersonation or mass fabrication.”

Dismissing the plea, Justice Brar concluded that “the petitioners have failed to place sufficient, cogent or verifiable material on record to substantiate the grave allegations of systemic fraud, paper leakage or mass copying,” thereby refusing to interfere with the recruitment process.