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1. By this common order, the captioned petitions are hereby disposed of. The facts for the sake of brevity and convenience are borrowed from CWP No.1971 of 2024.

2. The petitioner through instant petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India is seeking setting aside of order dated 16.03.2023 (Annexure P-15) and 26.05.2023 (Annexure P-18) whereby his candidature for the post of Computer/Digital Forensic Officer has been rejected.

3. The respondent, inviting applications for different posts including post of Computer/Digital Forensics Officer (for short 'CDFO'), in Bureau of 2 of 38 Neutral Citation No:=2024:PHHC:039092 2024:PHHC:039092 CWP- 1971-2024 & connected cases -3- Investigation, issued an advertisement No. 5 of 2021 dated 17.08.2021 (Annexure P-1). As per advertisement, there were two stages of selection process. The first stage comprised of Computer Based Test (for short 'CBT') and on the basis of marks obtained in the CBT, a list of shortlisted candidates was to be prepared. The second stage comprised of scrutiny of documents.

4. As per the advertisement, the candidate is required to have a minimum of 12 years of "relevant work experience". Since the post for which the candidate has applied is "Computer/Digital Forensics Officer", the "relevant work experience" here refers to work experience in the field of "Computer/Digital Forensics".

6. The candidate's experience as Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering is not relevant to the field of Computer/Digital forensics, where the principal job of the incumbent would be to extract data from mobile/computer devices and analyze the same which is a niche expert field requiring skills and expertise not acquired or practiced by the candidate in his experience as lecturer in a college.

35. The Stage-I consisted of written test of 100 multiple choice questions carrying 400 marks. In the advertisement, syllabus for each post was notified. The syllabus for the post of CDFO comprised of Digital Forensic Tools (40 marks), Digital Forensics (40 marks), Computer Forensic Tools (60 36 of 38 Neutral Citation No:=2024:PHHC:039092 2024:PHHC:039092 CWP- 1971-2024 & connected cases -37- marks), Windows Systems and Artifacts (40 marks), Mobile Phone Forensics (60 marks), Introduction to Network Security and Associated Techniques (40 marks), Language-English (32 marks), Punjabi (28 marks), General Awareness (20 marks), Quantitative Aptitude (20 marks) and Mental Logical Ability (20 marks). The syllabus was directly linked with post and petitioners cleared the written test. There was no viva voce or practical test which indicated that knowledge of candidates was assessed on the basis of written test. In the absence of interview or practical test, there was no reason to disbelieve experience possessed by candidates which was directly linked with their educational qualification and at the time of release of provisional list was also accepted. The domain experts have accepted experience for the post of ITO/ITA, thus, there was no reason to reject when required experience for the post of ITO/ITA and CDFO is same and ITO is feeder cadre of CDFO. An employee working on the post of ITO would not get experience of CDFO.