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The Hindu
The Hindu
National
K.V. Aditya Bharadwaj

Irregularities alleged in selection list of gazetted probationers

The selection list for the posts of 428 gazetted probationer officer for the 2015 batch of the Karnataka Public Service Commission (KPSC), notified recently, is all set to be challenged in the High Court. It has already been challenged in the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal (KAT).

Aspirants who did not make the cut allege lack of transparency and widespread tampering of marks. A welfare forum of aggrieved KAS aspirants has now demanded a probe into the alleged irregularities by either a judicial commission or the Criminal Investigation Department.

These aspirants, more than a 100, recently met Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa and Chief Secretary T.M. Vijay Bhaskar and petitioned them to stay the notification of the selection list and also demanded a re-evaluation.

“We have information from the KPSC that the marks were tampered with after evaluation. We demand that CCTV camera footage of the evaluation room be looked into,” said Vinay, an aspirant. An RTI application has been filed seeking CCTV camera recordings from January 1, 2019 to December 23, 2019.

“Candidates who have consistently secured high marks in their previous attempts — 2011, 2014 — have scored at least 100 to 125 marks below their expectations,” the petition states, claiming tampering. RTI applications have now been filed to seek the last date/time of the first, second and third evaluation of all the digitally evaluated answer scripts and also audit logs of the software.

The KPSC introduced digital evaluation in 2014, but it has till now not published the process of digital evaluation, which is mandatory as it is a e-governance module. “I had raised the issue of lack of checks and balances in the digital evaluation process in 2014 itself, but till date nothing has been disclosed. This itself is a big loophole,” said Vivek, a software engineer and an aspirant.

The KPSC gave only a week’s time when it published the provisional list on December 23, and not the usual 30 days, for filing objections. “The KPSC has not given a break-up of marks in each paper and interview of the selected candidates. This is against transparency. For those of us who did not make it, they only announced a break-up of the written exam and interview scores, and not of the individual papers,” said Farzana T., a teacher and an aspirant. The provisional list got the highest number of objections — 263 — but all were reportedly rejected and the final list was notified on January 10, 2020 without making any changes or giving explanation to those who filed objections, she said.

Multiple attempts made to elicit a response from the KPSC were not successful.

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