Some of the candidates, who attended interviews held by the Karnataka Public Service Commission (KPSC) following the 2011 batch examinations held to select gazetted officers in Group A and B, have moved the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal (KAT) questioning the State government’s direction to the KPSC to redo valuation and interview.
In their applications, Gowrav Kumar and eight others have contended that the State government has no jurisdiction to issue any direction to the KPSC, which is an independent body set up under Articles 319 to 321 of the Constitution. The State government, on October 15, 2013, had issued a direction to the KPSC to re-evaluate the answer scripts of the main examinations and to conduct interviews based on the outcome of the re-evaluation.
The government had asked the KPSC to discard the valuation of answer scripts of the main exam, the list of candidates selected for interviews, and the result of the interviews of those candidates.
The government directive followed an interim report submitted by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which was asked to probe allegations of malpractice and corruption in the process of valuation and interview that were held between December 2012 and May 2013.
The CID report had indicated some candidates had indulged in malpractice.
The applicants claimed that they did not indulge in any malpractice and hence the government’s order to re-evaluate all answer scripts was against their interest when the government was not aware of the beneficiaries of such malpractice.
The KAT has posted the pleas for final hearing to January 21, while asking the government and the KPSC to file their responses by then.
