Nandkumar Vithoba Bandgar v. Maharashtra Public Service Commission & Ors.

category. It is well settled that there is no obligation to call for all the candidates satisfying the minimum eligibility requirement. Where the number of applicants is high, unless the statute or the rule specifically provide otherwise, the number of candidates to be called for interview, has necessarily to be in reasonable proportion to the number of vacancies to be filled in and all the candidates need not be called for interview. (See M. P. Public Service Commission v. Navnit Kumar Potdar, AIR 1995 SC 77, R.H. Patil v. High Court of Karnataka, 1996 LAB I.C. 2214 and Union of India Vs. T. Sundararaman, (1997) 4 SCC 664).

The Learned Counsel for the Petitioner, however, submitted that the Supreme Court has taken a different view in State of Punjab and others vs. Manjit Singh and others, (2003) 11 SCC 559. We have gone through this judgment and we do not think that the decision is applicable to the facts of the present case. The issue involved in that case was, whether it was competent for the Punjab Public Service Commission to resort to screening test 3 with a view to short list the number of candidates to bring it to the requisite ratio and whether a written test could be held to fix some minimum cut-off marks, where the process of selection was by interview of eligible candidates belonging to the reserved category. The Court reiterated that the Commission has power for such a short listing but held that it was not proper to fix any minimum qualifying marks. This issue does not arise in the instant case.