The Telangana High Court on Tuesday set aside the provisional selection notification for the Group-II Services recruitment from 2015/2016 and nullified the results and selection list dated October 24, 2019, declaring the Telangana Public Service Commission’s (TGPSC’s) action of including candidates with tampered answer sheets as “illegal, arbitrary, and unconstitutional”.
The selection process completed in 2019 filled 1,032 vacancies in 13 categories across Group-II Services, where successful candidates are presently serving in the government.
The verdict by Justice Nagesh Bheemapaka comes following a batch of writ petitions filed by meritorious candidates who challenged the TGPSC’s procedure, arguing that the inclusion of vitiated Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets violated previous, binding court orders.
The controversy centres on the evaluation of OMR answer sheets where candidates had used whiteners, erasers, or made overwriting in Part-B, the critical section containing the answers to the 150 questions.
The petitioners contended that the TGPSC acted in defiance of a 2019 division bench judgment, which had unequivocally endorsed the recommendations of a 2017 technical committee. This committee had called for an “absolute bar on evaluating answer sheets that have been altered, scratched or whitened in the answer portion”.
Justice Bheemapaka ruled that the TGPSC’s subsequent decision to evaluate and include such sheets amounted to “a clear departure from the judicially-approved procedure”.
The High Court delivered a strong indictment of the Commission’s conduct, declaring, “Inclusion of candidates, who have tampered with Part-B of OMR answer sheets is declared illegal, void and unconstitutional.”
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The TGPSC’s defence that it employed an advanced automated scanning system capable of differentiating between permissible and impermissible marks was swiftly rejected by the court. Justice Bheemapaka emphasised that “the use of automated machines cannot override express judicial and technical prohibitions”, and that the failure to exclude visibly tampered sheets “amounts to violation of principle of fairness in public recruitment”.
The judge further asserted that the Commission had “violated the letter and spirit of the division bench’s judgment and acted beyond its lawful powers”, resulting in a “manifest injustice to petitioners”.
The court, in allowing the petitions, issued clear and stringent directions to the TGPSC to “re-evaluate and finalize the selection strictly in accordance with the directions issued by the division bench… and the recommendations of the technical committee” within eight weeks and issue appointment orders to the eligible candidates.
Also, the TGPSC was severely cautioned for its actions and ordered to implement “adequate transparency measures, including physical verification, videography, and record preservation” in all future OMR evaluations to prevent any recurrence of such irregularities. The order concluded with a stern warning to “scrupulously adhere to the binding judicial directions… failing which serious view shall be taken”.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
