Five face action for changing answer sheets in judicial service exams in UP

Lucknow, July 2 (IANS) The Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC) has taken action against five officers and employees in connection with the alleged case of changing of answer sheets of a candidate of UP Judicial Service Civil Judge (Junior Division) Main (Written) Examination-2022, commonly known as PCS (J) Mains-2022.

The UP Judicial Service Civil Judge (Junior Division) (Mains) Examination 2022 was conducted between May 22 and 25, 2023.

The results were announced on August 30, 2023 and marks were made public in November 2023.

UPPSC secretary Ashok Kumar said section officer Shiv Shankar, review officer Neelam Shukla and assistant review officer Bhagwati Devi have been suspended after being found guilty of negligence 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," he added.

PCS (J) Main exam-2022 candidate Shravan Pandey saw his answer sheets under the RTI Act. After this, a petition was filed by him in the Allahabad high court in which he had alleged that the handwriting in his English answer sheet was different and some pages of another answer sheet were torn due to which he could not succeed in the main examination.

After this, the high court on June 5, 2024 directed the UPPSC to present the answer sheets of six question papers of the petitioner before the court.

The Commission appeared in the high court on June 7, 2024 and gave an affidavit that after the case came to light, the internal process of awarding dummy roll numbers to ensure their anonymity during evaluation to all 18,042 answer sheets of all 3,019 candidates who had appeared in the main examination were being examined.

Meanwhile, the Commission also started showing the answer sheets to the candidates from June 20. The candidates appearing in the main examination of PCS-J 2022 will be shown their copies till July 30 according to their serial number. So far, 232 candidates have seen their answer sheets.