E-Paper
SC asks UPSC to appear after plea complains of multiple answers in civil services prelims
The Supreme Court is hearing a matter where a UPSC aspirant claimed that this year’s Civil Services Preliminary Examination paper had questions with multiple answers and many were open to subjective interpretation.
The Supreme Court asked the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on Thursday to appear before it in a matter where a law student complained against “wrong questions” in this year’s Civil Services Preliminary Examination conducted on June 18.
A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra did not issue a formal notice to the commission but asked its lawyer to be present on August 1.
It asked the petitioner – Ashita Chawla – to supply a copy of the petition to the UPSC’s advocate and also sought presence of the Centre’s advocate during the hearing.
Chawla – a UPSC aspirant - claimed that this year’s paper had questions with multiple answers and many were open to subjective interpretation of the examinees.
She said there was no predetermined syllabus for the preliminary examination and the pattern changes every year.
Chawla said the standard of the paper has seen a marked decline over the past two years. Last year, the exam had questions testing rote learning of current affairs, similar to those asked in clerical exams.
The applicants resort to either matching their answers with the keys released by coaching institutes or look up answers on the internet and various books.
“This year was a new low, wherein all standards of lowliness were broken,” Chawla stated in her petition, adding that the absence of any answer key has made the future of the aspirants uncertain.
Unlike previous years, this year’s paper had multiple answers and questions open to subjective interpretation, she said.
The coaching keys themselves differed in about 10-12 questions, Chawla said, submitting a list of them.
She cited earlier Supreme Court judgments to state that a question having two or more correct answers should be considered incorrect.
Chawla asked the court to direct the UPSC to release the answer key to the preliminary examination and also set up an expert committee to examine this year’s papers.
