Jaipur, May 20 (IANS) In a significant relief to candidates challenging the re-examination process of the SI Recruitment-2021, the Rajasthan High Court on Wednesday directed the Rajasthan Public Service Commission (RPSC) to provisionally allow the petitioners to appear in the examination by giving them an opportunity to edit their application forms.

The order was passed by the bench of Justice Anand Sharma while hearing petitions filed by Prashanjeet Singh, Devendra Saini, Madhusudan Sharma and others.

Counsel for the petitioners argued that the candidates had applied for the original SI Recruitment-2021 examination but, due to various reasons, could not appear in both papers of the examination process. However, the RPSC is presently permitting only those candidates to participate in the re-examination who had appeared in both papers during the original examination conducted in 2021.

The petitioners contended that in previous cancelled recruitment examinations, including EO-RO and LDC recruitments, all applicants were allowed to participate in the re-examinations. Denying the same benefit in SI Recruitment-2021 amounts to a violation of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution, relating to equality and equal opportunity, they said.

They further informed the Court that through a press note issued on May 8, the Commission had opened the application-editing window from May 16-30 only for candidates who had appeared in both papers earlier.

After hearing arguments from both sides, the Court directed the RPSC to provisionally permit the petitioners to appear in the examination and allow them to edit their application forms. Advocates Raghunandan Sharma, Rampratap Saini, Nikhil Kumawat and Ravindra Saini appeared for the petitioners.

During the hearing, the RPSC submitted that more than four lakh candidates had merely filled out application forms in the original recruitment process but did not actually appear for the examination.

The Commission argued that many of these candidates may now be employed elsewhere or may no longer be preparing for the examination. Allowing all such candidates to participate again would require scrutiny of nearly four lakh additional application forms, which would be extremely difficult, the RPSC told the Court. Around 7.95 lakh candidates had applied for SI Recruitment-2021.

However, only 3,83,097 candidates appeared in both papers of the written examination conducted between September 13 and September 15, 2021. The Commission had therefore restricted eligibility for the re-examination to only those candidates.

The SI Recruitment-2021 process had earlier been cancelled by a Single Bench of the Rajasthan High Court through an order dated August 28, 2025. The decision was later upheld by a Division Bench on April 4, 2026.

The selected trainee SIs subsequently challenged the decision in the Supreme Court. However, on May 4, a bench comprising Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma dismissed the Special Leave Petition filed by the selected candidates, effectively upholding the cancellation of the recruitment process.

–IANS

arc/dpb