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Synopsis

The Allahabad High Court on Monday restrained the publication of any details from the affidavits filed regarding the marks assigned by the Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC) to candidates of the U.P. Judicial Service Civil Judge (Junior Division) Examination-2022.

The bench of Justices Saumitra Dayal Singh and Donadi Ramesh took on record the affidavits filed by the petitioner and compliance affidavit filed by the Chairman, U.P. Public Service Commission, and posted the matter for further hearing on July 19, 2024. 

"Until further orders of this Court, parties are restrained from publishing any part of the affidavit exchanged pertaining to the award of marks by the Commission. Also, for that purpose, office may not issue certified or other copy of the facts disclosed in the compliance affidavit filed by the Chairman, U.P. Public Service Commission. Any party flouting the orders will be dealt with accordingly," court ordered. 

On July 1, the UPPSC admitted that there was an error in the preparation of the merit list of the written examination concerning 50 candidates of the PCS-J 2022 exam. 

According to the UPPSC, the checklist of Master Fake Code pasted on two bundles of the answer books for the paper English got interchanged such that in the preparation of the merit list of the written examination the marks of one set of 25 candidates got interchanged with the marks of another set of 25 candidates.

On this, the court had noted that though the Commission had owned the mistake, the compliance affidavit did not indicate to any extent the consequent change in the merit list of the written examination caused by such mistake.

Shravan Pandey, who participated in the PCS J Main Exam 2022 moved the high court, raising concerns that his English answer sheet was tampered with, showing different handwriting and that several pages from another answer sheet were missing, leading to his failure in the examination.

Pandey took the U.P. Judicial Service Civil Judge (Junior Division) (Mains) Examination 2022, with results announced on August 30, 2023. He was unhappy with his scores, particularly in the English paper where he received only 47 out of 200 marks. Seeking transparency, he filed an RTI request and obtained his marks for six papers. Upon inspecting the answer sheets, he noticed discrepancies: the handwriting in the English paper did not match his own, and several pages of the Hindi paper were torn. Dissatisfied with these findings, he demanded further scrutiny of the answer sheets under RTI, which was denied by the UPPSC. This compelled him to move the high court. 

Case Title: Shravan Pandey v. State Of Up And 2 Others