The Supreme Court on Saturday refused to stay or postpone Sunday’s Civil Services Preliminary Examination 2014.
A Bench of Justices J.S. Khehar and Arun Mishra at a special sitting told counsel for the petitioner “You raised only questions on comprehension part that has already been removed and the defect has been remedied. Further nine lakh students are ready to appear in the examination and it cannot be postponed.” The Bench dismissing the petition filed by a candidate Angesh Kumar.
Following widespread protest against the Civil Services Aptitude Test, the Union Public Service Commission announced a new marking scheme for CSPE-2014 in line with the government's decision not to count the marks for English comprehension section of Paper II for gradation. The UPSC has asked the examinees to leave the questions in this section unanswered as they would not be evaluated. The two-hour duration of the paper, however, would remain unchanged.
The petitioner said “the skewed nature of the present pattern is manifested in the results where the percentage of successful candidates from urban English speaking background and Engineering/Science background has increased to the disadvantage of students from students of non urban background and Humanities stream Around 9 lakh students have applied to appear in the examination. It was felt by the larger section of the student belonging to humanities stream that the pattern was set with an intention to benefit candidates from management and technical background. Student all over India expressed grievances regarding the new pattern of exams.”
He said the government and the UPSC had not addressed the demands of the aspirants and lot of time had been lost in protesting against. The government had even rejected the demand to grant extension of time for allowing sufficient time for preparation of the examination. He prayed for staying tomorrow’s examination and a direction to postpone the examination by two months.
