VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh High Court has taken on record the final report of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the evaluation process in the APPSC Group-I Mains examination, with the batch of appeals scheduled for hearing on September 21 (Monday).
A Division Bench comprising Justice D Ramesh and Justice A Hariharanadha Sarma, in its September 7 order, recorded that the SIT had submitted its final report in compliance with the court’s August 10 directions.
The Registry was directed to keep the report on record and provide copies to parties wherever applications had been filed. The annexures were ordered to be kept separately in the same sealed cover in which they were submitted.
The SIT examined records relating to 165 selected candidates, 161 candidates ranked immediately below them and 408 writ petitioners. Seven Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) centres in Hyderabad, New Delhi, Shimla, Pune, Bhopal, Kolkata and Guwahati examined original answer scripts, scanned copies and valuation slips.
In respect of the 165 selected candidates, the forensic examination did not find their original answer scripts substituted or tampered with. The SIT also examined barcode records. Barcodes on the scripts, original OMR valuation slips and slips used during the Vijayawada evaluation matched, except in two cases involving selected candidates.
The SIT attributed the two cases to an interchange of booklets when APPSC handed over records for investigation and recorded no discrepancy in their bar code identity or marks.
The investigation, however, recorded several procedural issues in the evaluation process followed by APPSC between 2020 and 2022. The High Court had earlier, in October 2021, set aside the digital evaluation and directed a fresh conventional manual evaluation.
The SIT also examined an evaluation-related exercise at Haailand, where the original scripts remained for 84 days in private custody. It recorded that 66 data-entry operators entered marks derived from the cancelled digital evaluation without opening the scripts.
A fresh manual evaluation was later conducted at three Vijayawada centres between March and May 2022 by 162 professors and lecturers. Forensic examination found corrections on valuation slips across the categories examined. Among the 165 selected candidates, 76 had marks reduced through corrections and 66 had marks increased. The SIT material does not record a finding that the selected candidates acted with mala fide intent or secured an undue advantage. The 165 candidates joined services on September 30, 2022, subject to the outcome of the litigation.