HYDERABAD: Paving the way for filling 1,032 Group-II posts as per the notification issued on Dec 30, 2015 and supplementary notification on Sept 1, 2016, a division bench of the High Court on Monday permitted the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) to go ahead with the selection process of Group-II posts examination which was held in Nov 2016. Further, the bench directed the commission to include the candidates in the selection process who were earlier left out for committing mistakes such as double bubbling in OMR sheets, usage of whiteners and wrong bubbling.
About 7.89 lakh candidates have applied and 5.2 lakh appeared for the written examination and a list of candidates short-listed for certificate verification in the ratio of 1:3 and verification process commenced in June 2017. In the meantime, lot of complaints, including serious lapses on the part of invigilators, were made to the TSPSC after the written exam. The commission appointed a technical committee to look into the alleged errors in selection process and the latter submitted its report in March 2017 with a finding that there were serious lapses on the part of invigilators. The invigilators originally distributed one set of question paper booklets and OMRs and later changed the question booklets and this aspect was upheld by a sub-committee appointed by the TSPSC in May 2017.
On October 12 last year, a single judge directed the TSPSC not to take into consideration of the answer sheets wherein double bubbling by the candidates took place in the exam. Further, the judge ordered to award marks to the candidates who have given answers to 19 questions (out of a total of 600) which were removed earlier due to dispute, and to revise the list in the ratio of 1:2. Aggrieved with the same, several appeals have been filed before the division bench challenging the order of the single judge.
The counsels appearing for the appellants told the Court that double bubbling took place due to lack of knowledge of the invigilators in registering the personal details of the candidates. It was brought to the notice of the Court about the recommendations made in the report submitted by the advocates’ committee which was constituted earlier by the High Court, suggesting to take into consideration in the answer sheets wherein double bubbling by the candidates took place. The committee has personally examined about 5,000 answer sheets, they added.