Chandigarh, February 6
Answer four questions and get marks for five! Perhaps this generosity can be bestowed on candidates by the Haryana Public Service Commission only.
The commission’s generous nature was revealed during the inspection of the answersheets of 53 successful candidates of the Haryana Civil Service (HCS) and allied services examination conducted by it during the Chautala regime. The answersheets were inspected on the orders of a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Vijender Jain and Justice K.S. Ahluwalia of the Punjab and Haryana High Court today by former Advocate-General Mohan Jain along with a team of his juniors. Advocates of respondents were also present.
The commission, of course, has been selective in its generosity.
Jain was appearing for petitioner Karan Singh Dalal, Congress MLA from Palwal.
It was found that Kuldhir Singh, son of Sher Singh Badsami, political adviser to then Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala, answered only four questions in his history paper. However, he was awarded marks for five questions. In his Hindi paper also, the marks were increased for obvious reasons.
Kuldhir’s case was not isolated. Jagdeep, said to be a close relative of then chairman of the commission K.C. Bangar, too was a beneficiary of the commission’s generosity. He answered four questions in the geography paper but got marks for five questions. No wonder these two were among the successful candidates.
Certain candidates like Anjana Malik and Narender Kumar Saarwan violated the mandatory stipulation that no candidate would reveal her or his identity on the answersheet other than at the specified place. But no action was taken against them.
In a peculiar case, a Scheduled Caste candidate, Shailender Singh Birla, who deserved to be in merit against a seat of the general category on the basis of his performance in the written examination, was given dismally low 17 marks out of 100 in the interview. He got 582 marks in the written examination. He was selected as excise and taxation officer instead of an HCS officer. But he did not join as protest against injustice with him.
On the other hand, Ranjit Kaur, sister of a powerful bureaucrat in the Chautala regime, got 493 marks in the written examination but was given 90 marks in the interview. She made to the HCS. Surprisingly,
her answersheets seemed to have been re-stapled.
In certain cases marks were increased by cutting the original marks in ink different from that used while evaluating the answersheets. The cuttings were not counter-signed by the examiner.
Two girl candidates, who could not make to the HCS, later joined the IAS and the IPS. Mona Pruthi, one of the unsuccessful candidates in the HCS examination, later topped the IAS examination, while Sonia Narang made it to the IPS. The case will now come for hearing on February 12.
