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Don’t tolerate carelessness, malpractices, SC tells PSCs
Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, July 2
The Supreme Court has directed the public service commissions (PSCs) to fail all candidates who either committed malpractices in the qualifying examination or were careless in following the instructions for using the answer sheets.

A Bench comprising Justices Anil R Dave and Dipak Misra gave the ruling while disqualifying the candidates selected by the Tamil Nadu PSC (TNPSC) for the post of Class 1 officers as they had violated the instructions for using only blue or black pens and desisting from making any markings or indications on the answer sheets.

The SC noted that such violations indicated that the candidates were either careless or wanted to reveal their identities to the examiner by using unapproved inks, making markings or leaving out some pages blank.

“In either case, such a candidate cannot be selected. A candidate who is so careless that he does not bother about his own interest (by not reading the instructions) cannot be expected to become a good officer,” the Bench held.

“And if he has done it deliberately, then also he should not be appointed as an officer because one who plans such illegalities even before joining his service, cannot be expected to become a fair officer,” it explained.

“So, in either case, such a candidate cannot be selected for appointment as an officer and that too a Class-1 officer of any state,” the SC ruled.

TNPSC had recommended appointment of 91 such officers on the basis of the examination conducted following an advertisement brought out in 2000. Thousands of candidates had taken the examination and some of them had gone to the Madras HC even before the results were declared, alleging malpractices. Nevertheless, the state recruited them by saying that their appointments would be subject to the outcome of the court case.