Supreme Court Issues Notice On Plea Seeking Smooth & Transparent Conduct Of SSC Exams

The Supreme Court today(September 4) issued notice in a writ petition seeking the streamlining of the national recruitment examinations conducted by the Staff Selection Commission ("SSC"). Directions have been sought to ensure that the exam is conducted fairly and transparently. 

A bench comprising Justice PS Narasimha and Justice AS Chandurkar issued notice. 

As per the writ petition, the SSC is responsible for conducting recruitment examinations for several gazetted and non-gazetted posts in various Ministries. For this purpose, it had issued a tender to Tata Consultancy Services for the past several years, which had been conducting examinations smoothly and transparently. 

However, according to the petitioner, SSC abruptly selected Eduquity for conducting the computer-based test phase of its examinations, despite being fully aware of the numerous allegations of mismanagement and the dismal track record of Eduquity in conducting examinations. 

SSC conducted the SSC Selection Post/Phase XIII Examination, 2025, through Eduquity recently. It is alleged that Exam 1 was riddled with severe lapses, affecting thousands of candidates nationwide. Instances of inadequate infrastructure, malfunctioning systems, improper invigilation, and discrepancies in question papers were widely reported, causing grave hardship to genuine aspirants as claimed in the writ petition. 

Against this, representations were made to the concerned Ministry of the Union of India, apprising them of the negligent manner in which Exam I was conducted. It was assured that such instances would not be repeated; however, Exam II incurred similar problems.

It is stated that the SSC, a day before Exam II, admitted to its gross mismanagement by releasing a notification stating that only 79% candidates had been allotted centres as per their preference list. Also, in another notification dated August 8, the SSC acknowledged the mass-scale disruption caused during Exam I, and postponed the exam for the 59,000 affected candidates to August 29.

Since Exam III is set to be conducted in September, the candidates, based on the past experience and apprehending the same negligence, had approached the Court for some directions. 

Case Details: NIKHIL KUMAR Vs UNION OF INDIA|W.P.(C) No. 848/2025 Diary No. 48355 / 2025

Appearance: Counsels appearing for Petitioner (Nikhil Kumar), Mr. Saurav Agrawal, Advocate and Ms. Raadhika Chawla, Advocate

Writ Petition drafted by AoR Abiha Zaidi