On Monday, July 1st, the Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC) took strict action against 5 officers and employees for their involvement in a purported incident of changing a candidate’s answer sheets for the UP Judicial Service Civil Judge (Junior Division) Main (Written) Examination-2022, also known as PCS (J) Mains-2022.
UPPSC secretary Ashok Kumar said that section officer Shiv Shankar, review officer Neelam Shukla, and assistant review officer Bhagwati Devi have been suspended for their negligent behavior in investigating this matter.
“The supervisory officer has also decided to take departmental action against deputy secretary Satish Chandra Mishra. Permission has also been sought from the state government for action against retired assistant review officer Chandrakala,” Kumar was quoted as saying.
The incident came to the fore after Shravan Pandey, a candidate for the PCS (J) Main Exam-2022, obtained access to his answer sheets using the RTI Act. Following this, he launched a petition in the Allahabad High Court, alleging that the handwriting on his English answer sheet was different and that certain pages of another answer sheet were torn, stopping him from passing the main examination.
Following this, on June 5th, 2024, the high court instructed the UPPSC to hand over the petitioner’s answer sheets for six question papers to the court.
Following this, the Commission on June 7th appeared in court and filed an affidavit stating that after the case was made public, the internal process of assigning dummy roll numbers to all 18,042 answer sheets of all 3,019 applicants who had taken the main examination was being investigated.
As per the reports, meanwhile, the Commission started presenting the answer sheets to candidates on June 20th. The applicants who appeared in the main PCS-J 2022 examination will reportedly be shown their copies until July 30th as per their roll numbers. So far, 232 candidates have reviewed their answer papers.
This comes amid the ongoing controversy over the NEET-UG exam paper leak in the country. Around 67 NEET applicants received a perfect score of 720/720 marks to share the All-India Rank (AIR) 1 after which several students and their parents complained about glitches, alleged malpractices, ambiguous implementation of grace marks, and above all, an alleged paper leak. Several teachers and authorities have been arrested from Bihar and Maharashtra for their involvement in the case. The opposition parties in the Parliament have been protesting over the matter however, the government has assured strict action in the case.
The U.P. Judicial Service Civil Judge (Junior Division) (Mains) Examination 2022 was held between May 22nd and May 25th, 2023. The results were released on August 30th last year and the scores were made public in November 2023.
