Plea for judicial enquiry into Group-I main exam: HC directs government not to issue appointment letters

Telangana High Court halts Group-I appointment letters amid concerns over evaluation process, directs certificate verification instead.

Justice Namavarapu Rajeshwara Rao of the Telangana High Court on Thursday directed the State government not to issue appointment letters to the candidates who had been selected for the Group-I posts through a main examination conducted by the Telangana State Public Service Commission. 

The Judge said the government, however, can go ahead with the process of verification of certificates of candidates selected for the Group-I posts.

The interim direction was passed by the Judge following contentions presented for two consecutive days by senior counsel B. Rachna Reddy for the petitioners and TGPSC counsel Rajashekhar in a writ petition filed by 20 candidates who had appeared for the Group-I main examination convened by the TGPSC. 

The petitioners sought a direction to order a “court-monitored enquiry” or an independent “judicial enquiry” into the numerous “irregularities, inconsistencies and illegalities in the evaluation process”. They wanted the HC to either ‘conduct a re-evaluation or a re-examination based on the intensity of irregularities detected’ for all the candidates for issuing a General Ranking List afresh. 

Advocate Rachna Reddy cited that several methods followed by the Commission in conducting the Group-I main exams sowed seeds of suspicion among the minds of the candidates. Different hall ticket numbers were issued to the candidates for preliminary and main tests. Initially, the TGPSC announced total main exam centres were 45 but enhanced it to 46 through another announcement.

When the results were announced, the candidates were permitted to see the marks only through their respective web logins, the counsel said. The Commission could not explain how it released main exam results of 10 candidates over the number of 21,075 candidates, which it had earlier claimed as the total number of candidates to have attended the main exams, Ms. Rachna Reddy said. 

A candidate, Bommu Poojitha Reddy, with hall ticket no. 240918702, who applied for recounting, was shocked to find that 60 of her marks were reduced. The petitioners’ counsel contended that some of the top 500 rankers were from a few examination centres. The answer sheets collected from each centre were handed over to evaluators without shuffling.