BENGALURU: Upholding the state government’s decision to conduct a re-exam to recruit 545 police sub-inspectors (PSIs), the High Court of Karnataka directed it to entrust the re-exam process to an independent agency.
A division bench of Justice PS Dinesh Kumar and Justice TG Shivashankare Gowda passed this order while dismissing a batch of petitions questioning the government order issued on April 29, 2022, to conduct the re-exam.
“The option exercised by the executive (state) to cancel the examination and to conduct a re-examination is based on sound reasoning and to maintain the purity of examination,” the court said while declining to interfere with the order passed by the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal dismissing the applications filed by the candidates against re-examination.
The investigation reports stated that Bluetooth devices were used by some candidates while writing the examination and OMR answer sheets were tampered with. The answer sheets were accessed through the ADGP (Amrit Paul), who headed the recruitment wing of the police department. It is not in dispute that a scam has taken place with the involvement of several persons, including the ADGP, whose role erodes public trust and confidence, the court said.
The government contended that the ADGP is one of the accused. In all, 53 candidates, the ADGP and 51 others were arrested. The counsel for the petitioners contended that appointment orders ought to have been issued to untainted candidates after segregating OMR sheets of tainted and untainted candidates.
The court said that such an option would pre-suppose and dilute the charge of ‘use of Bluetooth’ levelled in the charge sheets filed before various courts. Unless a categorical finding is recorded to the effect that there was no malpractice by the use of Bluetooth, the wisdom of the executive in cancelling the examination cannot be found fault, the court said.
The court noted that sending answers through Bluetooth to the examination hall is impossible if the candidates or the external party did not have access to the question paper and the ‘version of the question paper prior to the examination. The probability of leakage is almost certain because without knowing the questions earlier, the external party could not have sent answers within 90 minutes, particularly when the transmission was only one way, the court said.