Jharkhand High Court extends relief to appointees, hearing on Oct 7

The Jharkhand High Court has extended relief to appointed candidates by keeping its interim stay on the cancellations in force.

The stay covers the JPSC 11th to 13th civil services, JSSC CGL, CDPO and Food Safety Officer appointments.

Justice Deepak Roshan said the state cannot remove appointees through a notification alone without natural justice.

The state filed its affidavit on September 18, citing alleged malpractice and irregularities.

The next hearing is on October 7 at 11:30 am.

The same report said the state argued that cancelling about 2,700 appointments in one stroke would lead to job losses for many state officers.

Senior advocate Meenakshi Arora and the Advocate General represented the state, and JPSC was represented by its own counsel.

Senior advocate Rajiv Ranjan, a former Advocate General of Jharkhand, appeared for the candidates along with several other advocates.

The petitioners were given time to file counter-affidavits, which the court has allowed within 10 days of receiving copies of the notices.

The next hearing has been fixed for October 7, 2026, at 11:30 am.

The court also appointed retired High Court judge Gautam Kumar Chaudhary to monitor the SIT investigation and hear candidates’ grievances.

The state government had announced the cancellations in August after weeks of student protests over alleged irregularities in the recruitment examinations.

A separate petition by activist Harisharan Devgan in the Supreme Court seeks a CBI probe, and the Supreme Court has issued notices to the Centre and the state on it.

Natural justice is the legal principle that a person must be heard, and given a chance to respond, before an adverse decision is taken against them.

The observations came during Friday’s hearing before Justice Deepak Roshan in the case titled Subhash Murmu and others versus the State of Jharkhand, registered as W.P.(S) No. 6512 of 2026.

High Court of Jharkhand, Ranchi, Wikimedia Commons, CC0