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On September 16, 2019 a division bench of the Jharkhand high court (HC) reserved its order on a letter patent appeal (LPA), which challenged the single judge order of validating the state government’s notification for publication of the civil services’ third revised results of the preliminary examination. 

The bench comprising Acting Chief Justice H C Mishra and Justice Deepak Roshan reserved the order after a marathon hearing lasting for almost three hours during which lawyers of the government, the Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) which conducted the examination and the petitioners presented their arguments. 

In 2016, JPSC had published an advertisement for recruitment of 326 officers in administrative service, police service, finance service and other posts through the Sixth Combined Civil Services Examination. After the preliminary examination, the JPSC published results of successful candidates 15 times more than the number of vacancies. 

Controversy began when the government subsequently issued a circular for publication of revised results declaring more candidates as successful in the preliminary examination. The circular was challenged in the HC but a single judge affirmed the decision of the government. 
On February 12, 2018, the state government issued another resolution stating that those candidates attaining the cut-off marks in the preliminary examination will be eligible for the mains examination. 

The petitioner, Pankaj Kumar Pandey, challenged the government resolution in the court through a writ petition. A single judge of HC dismissed the petition on May 18, 2018 and asked the JPSC to publish the results according to the notification. Subsequently, the JPSC on August 6, 2018 published the revised list of 34,634 successful candidates for the mains examination. Since the HC had not stayed the proceedings during the hearing, the JPSC also conducted the mains examination and also started assessment of answer sheets. Meanwhile, the petitioner filed the LPA with the division bench in this regard.