The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Monday directed the National Testing Services (NTS) administrator, the Sindh chief secretary, the SHC registrar and an SHC Inspection Team member to file comments in a petition challenging the examination procedure of lower judiciary judges.
The SHC division bench comprising Justice Athar Saeed and Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar also directed the respondents to submit the examination copies of the successful candidates.
The NTS test for 70 vacant posts of judicial magistrates and civil judges was held on December 29, in which 3,408 candidates took part and 66 were announced to have qualified.
On Friday, the bench headed by SHC Chief Justice Sarmad Jalal Usmani had transferred the constitutional petition to another division bench, saying that he could not conduct the hearing of the petition as he was part of the selection committee.
Barrister Abid Zuberi, Salahuddin Gandapure and Naeem Qureshi appeared before the court on the behalf of petitioners.
The constitutional petition filed at the SHC had challenged the test procedure for the post of civil judges and judicial magistrates. The petition was filed by Khalid Rajpar and fourteen other candidates pleading the cancellation of results of the test conducted by the NTS.
They submitted that only two percent questions in the written test were on law and the Constitution, while the remaining ones were totally irrelevant, which created difficulties for the candidates. Besides, in the last stage of the test, the candidates were informed that the time duration of the test was only 60 minutes instead of the 120 minutes.
The petitioners pleaded cancellation of the NTS test results before the next written test and include relevant questions in the paper.