SC refuses to postpone UPSC preliminary examination
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Saturday dismissed a petition by a civil services aspirant seeking stay on the UPSC preliminary examination scheduled for tomorrow.
While refusing to postpone the exam, the Supreme Court noted that nine lakh students were ready to appear in the exam tomorrow and that’s why it cannot be postponed at this juncture.
You raised only questions on comprehension part that has already been removed and the defect has been remedied, the court told the petitioner. On Friday, the Delhi High Court had also dismissed a similar PIL challenging UPSC’s recent decision asking civil services aspirants not to answer questions in the English Comprehensive section of the Preliminary Examination.
The HC had directed the petitioner to instead approach the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) as it is a service matter.
“Thousands of students will be adversely affected if the questions of the English Comprehensive section, that carries 22.5, out of 200 marks, will not be checked,” Vikas Nigwan, appearing for civil services aspirant Dinesh Bhatia, had said.
Recently, the Centre had, following protests by a section of students over English Comprehension test in the Preliminary Examination of the Civil Services examination, decided to remove the questions of English languages in the CSAT.
Later, Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) came out with the decision asking candidates to leave the questions unanswered during the CSAT examination as the section will not have any bearing on the merit list due to non-evaluation.
UPSC had, in its notification, said “the Paper-II would contain a section on English Language Comprehension Skills (Class X Level). Candidates must note that they do not have to answer the questions on this English Language Comprehension Skills (Class X Level) section. These questions will not be evaluated.”
The maximum marks for Paper II would be ‘200 minus the marks earmarked for the English language comprehension skills (Class X level), the UPSC had said.
