The Odisha High Court on Tuesday asked the Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) to furnish the details of the procedures it had adopted to conduct the Odisha Civil Service (OCS)-2011 Preliminary examinations by Wednesday and posted the OPSC’s petition to be heard again on that day.
OPSC in its petition had urged the High Court to quash the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT) order of last month and to allow the commission to conduct the OCS-2011 Main examinations, which are scheduled to begin from Saturday.The SAT in its order delivered on August 28 had scrapped the preliminary examination results, which were published in May, stating that grace marks awarded to certain students in some particular papers for wrong and wrongly printed questions were “arbitrary”. The tribunal had further directed the OPSC to refresh the preliminary results within two months by awarding pro rata grace marks.
The SAT order had come while adjudicating the applications filed by at least eight candidates, who have failed to clear the preliminary examinations. Challenging the SAT order, the OPSC in its petition has mentioned that it would not be sensible to derail the process of the OCS (Main) examinations now since the same has been scheduled to begin in next four days.
More than 5,800 candidates are all set to write the Main examinations and admit cards to them have already been issued, the petition said.
“Ever since the Prelim results were published in the first week of May this year, the unsuccessful candidates were given ample opportunities to raise objections if any with the OPSC. Till July 30, no one turned up before the OPSC but only eight unsuccessful candidates preferred to move applications with the SAT,” said OPSC Counsel and Senior Advocate Pradeepta K Mohanty hoping that the High Court would take an appropriate decision considering the anxiety of the OCS aspirants.