The bench comprising Justice Siddhartha Varma and Justice Manish Kumar Nigam during the hearing of candidate Shravan Pandey’s plea, which alleged discrepancies in the English and Hindi papers shown to him under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
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UTTAR PRADESH: On Friday (7th June): The Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC) informed the Allahabad High Court that it is investigating a candidate’s claim that his answer sheets for the UP Judicial Service Civil Judge (Junior Division) (Mains) Examination, 2022, were tampered with.
The bench comprising Justice Siddhartha Varma and Justice Manish Kumar Nigam during the hearing of candidate Shravan Pandey’s plea, which alleged discrepancies in the English and Hindi papers shown to him under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
Previously, the Court had directed UPPSC to produce Pandey’s answer sheets for all six papers to compare his handwriting. Advocate Nisheeth Yadav, representing UPPSC, indicated that an error might have occurred due to the process of maintaining candidate anonymity.
Yadav explained that a fake code is assigned to the candidates’ answer sheets to keep their identities anonymous, with the actual answer sheet only identifiable after decoding this number. He suggested that Pandey’s answer sheet might have been mistakenly exchanged with another candidate’s sheet.
Due to this allegation, UPPSC is reviewing all 18,042 answer sheets from 3,019 candidates. Consequently, there is a challenge in complying with the court’s order to present Pandey’s answer sheets immediately.
However, the UPPSC assured the Court that once the investigation is complete, the papers will be presented along with a report detailing the findings. The UPPSC also assured that no records related to the judicial examination would be destroyed until the case was resolved.
The Court, acknowledging the submission, scheduled the next hearing for July 1, instructing that any mistakes discovered be documented and all six subject answer sheets shown to the petitioner be presented.
Pandey had taken the judicial examination in May 2023. Results were declared on August 30, 2023, with marks published in November 2023. Dissatisfied with his marks, Pandey filed an RTI request in January 2024 for a detailed distribution of his marks across the six papers.
Upon learning he had scored only 47 out of 200 in the English paper, he requested to see his answer sheets. On May 25, when shown the answer sheets, Pandey noticed that the handwriting on the English paper did not match his, and the final pages of his Hindi paper were “scored off.” Subsequently, he approached the High Court.
Advocates Vibhu Rai and Dhananjai Rai represented the petitioner, while Advocate Nisheeth Yadav appeared for UPPSC.
Case Title: Shravan Pandey v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Others
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