UP Civil Judge exam: State PSC tells Allahabad High Court that allegation of tampering is being probed

The Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC) on Friday told the Allahabad High Court that it was looking into a candidate's allegation that his answer sheets of the UP Judicial Service Civil Judge (Junior Division) (Mains) Examination, 2022, had been tampered with [Shravan Pandey v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Others]..The submission was made before the division bench of Justice Siddhartha Varma and Justice Manish Kumar Nigam during the hearing of the candidate's plea alleging that there were discrepancies in the English and Hindi papers shown to him under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.The Court had earlier directed the UPPSC to furnish the candidate Shravan Pandey's answer sheets for all the six papers so that his handwriting can be compared. .Advocate Nisheeth Yadav, appearing for UPPSC, today apprised the Court that a mistake may have happened in Pandey's case because of the procedure by which anonymity of candidates is maintained.It was submitted that there is a system of giving a fake code to the answer sheets of the candidates to maintain their anonymity. The actual answer sheet would be known only after decoding the number given to it, the Court was told..With regard to Pandey's allegation, the counsel said what may have happened is that his paper might have got exchanged with the paper of some other candidate.In light of such an allegation, a scrutiny of all the 18,042 answer sheets of 3,019 candidates was being undertaken, the Court was told.Thus, the Court was informed that there was a difficulty in complying with the direction to produce his answer sheets. However, an assurance was given that on completion of the inquiry, the papers would be presented along with a report on what had happened.An undertaking was also given by the UPPSC that till the present case is decided, no record pertaining to the judicial examination would be weeded out..Considering the submission, the Court posted the matter for hearing before the appropriate bench on July 1."On that date, the mistake, if was committed, be brought on record and all the copies of the answer-sheets of the six subjects as we shown to the petitioners be also presented," it said in the order. .Pandey had appeared for the judicial examination in May 2023. While the result was declared on August 30, 2023, the marks scored by the candidates were made public in November 2023. Dissatisfied with the marks awarded to him, Pandey filed a request under the RTI Act in January 2024 seeking details of the distribution of marks in the six papers.After he came to know that he had received only 47 out of 200 in the English paper, he prayed that his answer sheets be also shown to him. When the answer sheets were shown to him on May 25, he discovered that his handwriting, as existed on the other papers, was not present on the English answer script. He also discovered that the answers on the Hindi paper's answer script were "scored off" in the final 3-4 pages. Pandey then approached the High Court..Advocates Vibhu Rai and Dhananjai Rai appeared for the petitioner.Advocate Nisheeth Yadav represented the UPPCS..[Read Order]