APPEAL IN DOUBLE BENCH AGAINST DECISION OF JUSTICE TRIPATHY ON 53rd TO 55th BPSC PT EXAM

HC order to review BPSC prelims paper

ANAND RAJ

Patna, Jan. 4: The high court today set aside the preliminarytest results of the 53rd to 55th common combined competitive examination conducted by Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) in 2011 and directed it (commission) to publish fresh result of unsuccessful candidates after re-evaluating their papers. A bench of Justice Ajay Kumar Tripathi directed the commission to re-evaluate the papers of the unsuccessful after deleting the nine questions found to be wrong by an expert committee constituted by theBPSC in accordance with the court’s directive in September last year. The court made it clear that the 15,137 candidates declared successful in the preliminary test by BPSC on July 16,2011, should not be disturbed while re-evaluating the papers. The bench passed the judgment on a bunch of petitions filed byunsuccessful candidates of the preliminary exam, challenging the BPSC’s decision to announce the results of the test abruptly deletingeight marks from 150. During the course of hearing, the commission admitted that nine questions out of 150 were wrong. Petitioners’ counsel Manan Kumar Mishra, who expressedunhappiness over the judgment, told The Telegraph: “We willchallenge the judgment in division bench seeking direction forreducing the nine marks from the current merit list in all thecategories. We will file the petition tomorrow in the high court.” Mishra, during the hearing, advocated reducing nine marks of each candidate and prepare a fresh merit list. But the court rejected the contention. Citing the civil judge (junior division) exam in which the same situation had arisen when commission arbitrarily reduced 25 marks but the division bench directed to reduce cut-off marks in each category by another 25 marks, Mishra had sought the same relief. Additional advocate general (1) Lalit Kishore told The Telegraph that the court had agreed to our contention, wherein thecommission had submitted during the hearing that it was ready to carry out re-evaluation after deleting nine wrong questions. The court has taken care of the successful candidates’ fate as there would be no re-evaluation of their answer-sheets.” An advertisement for BPSC preliminary exam was published on January1, 2011. The preliminary exam was conducted on April 17. The result was published on July 16, 2011. Of 1,37,694 candidates, about 15,137 candidates were declared successful by the commission that organised combined (53rd to 55th) civil services examination. Several candidates who failed to make it to the list approached thecourt on the issue. The petitioners said the commission had illegally deleted eight questions out of 150 asked in the exam and declared results on the basis of 142 questions. The petitioners maintained that they would have automatically qualified in the examination if the results were declared on the basis of 150 questions. The petitioners claimed that the answer booklets supplied by the commission had several defects. The multiple choices (answers) given against some questions were totally wrong but the commission published the result on the basis of such erroneous questions and answers, they said. They maintained that the act of declaring results on the basis of only 142 questions instead of 150 by the commission was totally arbitrary, illegal and mala fide.