In an alarming revelation, the Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC) has admitted to significant discrepancies in the main examination for recruitment of Civil Judges under the PCS J examination. This comes on the heels of alleged manipulations in the NEET examination for medical admissions, highlighting ongoing issues in public sector recruitment processes.
The UPPSC confessed in the Allahabad High Court that due to negligent handling by the officials responsible for coding the answer sheets, 50 candidates’ answer sheets were mistakenly swapped. This error came to light after the final results had already been declared and many candidates had joined their respective posts. The commission has suspended three officials found responsible for the oversight and has initiated departmental actions against others involved.
Shravan Kumar Pandey, a candidate affected by the mix-up, brought this issue to the court’s attention through a petition. He claimed that the handwriting on the evaluated answer sheet did not match his own, prompting a review of the results. The UPPSC has acknowledged that the bundles containing 25 answer sheets each were mistakenly interchanged, leading to incorrect coding.
The Allahabad High Court has now questioned the commission about the steps being taken to rectify the situation for the affected candidates and what measures will be implemented if any of the appointed candidates are found to be wrongly selected due to this error.
The UPPSC is reportedly taking steps to prevent such errors in the future, stressing that the involved answer sheets were from the English paper, which was worth 100 marks. In response to the controversy, the commission has made a commitment to transparency, allowing all candidates from the PCS J 2022 examination to view their answer sheets.
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The case, presided over by Justices S.D. Singh and Anish Kumar Gupta of the division bench, is set to continue with further hearings scheduled for July 8. Meanwhile, the UPPSC has been instructed to submit a detailed affidavit to the court outlining their plans for rectifying the results and addressing the future of the candidates currently employed under the tainted results.
