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- Supreme Court asked the UPSC to appear before the court on August 1 regarding exam controversy.
- The court didn’t issue a formal notice regarding the same.
- Hearing took place regarding the wrong questions in the Civil Services Prelims 2017.
After receiving complaints and pleas regarding the wrong questions in the UPSC Civil Services Preliminary Examination 2017, the Supreme Court asked the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) to appear before the court.
The SC bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra asked the UPSC lawyer to be present on August 1, 2017. However, the court didn’t issue a formal notice regarding the same. The UPSC Civil Services Prelims were conducted on June 18.
The Court also asked Ashita Chawla, the petitioner, to provide UPSC’s advocate with a copy of the petition. The Centre’s advocate has also been asked to be present at the next hearing.
In his petition, Chawla, a UPSC aspirant, said that there were various questions in the Civil Services Preliminary Exam 2017 that had multiple answers and the candidates were expected to answer these questions as per their subjective interpretation of the examinees.
Emphasising the fact that there is no predetermined syllabus for the preliminary exam, she said that the pattern of the exam changes every year. She also added that a decline in the standard of the exam has been observed from the last two years.
In 2016, the exam comprised questions that tested the rote learning of current affairs which is no better than the standards of the clerical exams, Chawla added.
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Applicants have to depend on coaching centres, internet resources and different books in order to verify their answers. The absence of answer keys has left the students in a fix, Chawla added.
Many of the questions that were left for subjective interpretation has caused distress amongst students. Answer keys released by various coaching centres also differ in 10 to 12 answers.
Chawla cited the example of Supreme Court’s previous rulings and stated that any question having two or more correct answers must be considered incorrect.
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She also asked the Court to direct the UPSC to declare the answer key for the preliminary exam. She further asked the Court to appoint a committee of experts to examine the question papers.
