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6. Aggrieved by the unjust and arbitrary action of the University, some of the Petitioners preferred representations to the University, but seeing no positive outcome, these petitions were filed.

COMMON CONTENTIONS ON BEHALF OF THE PETITIONERS:

7. Petitioners were eligible and duly qualified for the posts and on clearing the written examination on their own merit, they were offered appointments. There was no justifiable and plausible reason for placing the joining of the Petitioners on hold in the absence of any complaint with regard to the selection process. The impugned Notifications do not spell out a single reason which prompted the University to place the process under examination. Having taken an erroneous decision, University attempted to create material by constituting Committees to justify the said decision by a process of reverse engineering. Even before this Court, no material is placed which even remotely points to the alleged unfair means used by the Petitioners during the examination.

71. As rightly flagged by NTA, the data analysis by the Committee was restricted to what the University terms as 'suspected centres' and 'selected candidates' and therefore, by travelling on a wrong path, University reached the wrong destination. Suspected centres, as explained in the affidavit dated 17.02.2025, were centres where at least 03 candidates were finally selected, the rationale of choosing three as the least number of candidates being to show a systemic cheating/unfair means pattern. As further stated in the affidavit, 13 centres for the examination of Laboratory Attendant and 10 centres for the examination of Library Attendant were shortlisted, basis this analysis. With this restricted data, University proceeded to analyse the same by three methods, as aforementioned. The data analysis exercise reveals that having taken an erroneous decision at the initial stage to put on hold joining of the selected candidates, possibly under the extraneous influence of the Karamchari Union, University resorted to a process of reverse engineering to create material to support its plea of use of unfair means.

93. Having given a thoughtful consideration, this Court is of the view that University has miserably failed in establishing use of any unfair means in the examination in question and what comes to light is that by a process of reverse engineering for motivated reasoning, by analysing a skewed data the University is seeking to illegally justify its erroneous decision to shelve the process of selection, which cannot be accepted. The process of hindsight analysis adopted by the University by picking up a limited data of selected candidates and attempting to match the incorrect responses is a dangerous path to follow as by this process, any and every competitive examination will become vulnerable, even in the absence of any material showing use of unfair means and/or the modus operandi adopted by the candidates.