PCS-J Exam 2022 'Irregularities' | Justice Govind Mathur Commission Submits Its Report Before Allahabad High Court

The development comes almost 6 months after a Division Bench of the HC comprising Justice Saumitra Dayal Singh and Justice Donadi Ramesh appointed Justice Mathur as the head of an independent commission to examine serious concerns raised by several candidates regarding inconsistencies and malpractices in the conduct and evaluation of the examination.

As reported earlier, the Court had urged the Commission to file its report by May 31st, 2025, with suggestions on several crucial issues, including:

• Ways and means to make the evaluation process of UPPCS (J) Examination more responsive to the needs of selection and more trustworthy for all stakeholders, including the UPPSC;
• Steps to be taken to enforce such processes and procedures;
• Mechanisms to be revised or introduced to check deviations from accepted methods and practices prescribed by the Commission;
• Reasons and circumstances that may have prevented the Commission from detecting its own mistakes and offering timely self-correction before the declaration of results on August 30, 2023.

The Commission was constituted after the lead petitioner, Shravan Pandey, through Senior Advocate Syed Farman Ahmad Naqvi and Advocate Shashwat Anand, approached the HC alleging that his English answer sheet had been tampered with and that the handwriting did not match his own.

Apart from Pandey, several other candidates also approached the court with their grievances, seeking the issuance of appointment letters based on allegations of inconsistencies and malpractices in marking.

The Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC) in July 2024 itself admitted to an error in the preparation of the merit list for 50 candidates in the PCS-J 2022 Mains exam.

Noting the overlapping nature of multiple petitions, the Court had emphasised the need for a comprehensive and independent inquiry to safeguard the integrity of judicial appointments.

The Court had also underscored that the general practices and procedures of the Commission may need reform and upgradation to ensure standardised and credible evaluation mechanisms.

The Court pointed out the following deficiencies, noting that the same were required to be minimised.

(a) multiple corrections have been made in many Answer Booklets by Examiners - to the marks that may have been originally written;

(b) those corrections made, do not indicate any objective reason for the same. The fact such correction is made gives rise to doubts with and disputes raised by candidates, especially where marks first written are reduced;

(c) some of the corrections made are by way of overwriting made by the Examiners and others where marks first written have been scored out. At times fresh marks awarded have not been countersigned by the Examiner;

(d) wherever marks have been thus corrected, the same have not been countersigned by any independent authority of the Commission, be it be the Chief Examiner or some other responsible authority;

(e) inter-change of Checklist of Master Fake Code was an impermissible blunder

(f) question papers particularly in Law, were more theoretical than practical;

(g) Model Answer Key particularly for the papers in Law, appear to lean to test the theoretical knowledge of the candidates and they do not appear to lay emphasis to test the ability of the candidates to analyse and reason - the basic attributes of a judge;

(h) the Model Answer Key did not provide for scale of marks to be adhered to by all Examiners as may have helped to enforce a uniform scale of marking by considering the level/extent of correctness or error of individual answer responses;

(i) quality of evaluation process and the evaluation made are not of desired quality. Too many corrections have been made by the Examiners, some of them after scoring out the marks originally written and others by over-writing. Not all such corrections have been counter signed by the Examiners in the margin against the answer responses;

(j) where zero ('0') marks have been awarded against any answer response given to a descriptive/subjective answer, no clear marking policy may have preexisted. It may have allowed for a possibility of inconsistent marking standards, applied by different Examiners.

Accordingly, the Court requested Justice Mathur to accept the Commission specifically with respect to the points noted by the Court in the context of all Answer Booklets of Written Examination of UPPCS (J)-2022.

In turn, the UPPSC has been directed to make proper arrangements for the stay and working of the Commission, at Prayagraj and to provide adequate Secretarial help to the Commission, throughout to help the Commission complete its tasks in time, besides providing adequate office space to the Commission within the campus of the UPPSC, Prayagraj.

The commission has also been asked to preserve all Answer Booklets and all documents pertaining to the conduct of U.P.P.C.S.(J) 31 of 32 2022 Written Examination and for production and examination of the same by the Commission.