Plea In Delhi High Court Challenges Prelims Of UPSC Civil Services Exam 2023, Seeks Fresh Exam

A plea has been moved before the Delhi High Court challenging the preliminary examination of Civil Services Examination 2023 which was held by Union Public Service Commission last month.

Filed by Advocate Rajeev Kumar Dubey, the plea has been moved by 17 civil services aspirants. The plea also seeks a direction on UPSC and Union Government to re-conduct the preliminary exam and General Studies Paper I and Paper II.

The aspirants have also challenged the press note issued by UPSC on June 12 declaring the results of the preliminary examination. A direction is also sought on UPSC to publish the answer key with immediate effect.

“Not providing to the students, the answer key of an exam they have appeared for, not considering the representations of the candidates despite a particular time window being provided for the same, and, asking questions, which are disproportionately vague, testing candidates' ability to answer only on the basis of guesswork, is not only arbitrary but defies all principles of fairness, logic and rationality,” the plea reads.

The matter was listed before a vacation bench of Justice Manoj Jain today who has fixed it for hearing before the roster bench on July 03.

At the outset, Advocate Naresh Kaushik appearing for UPSC raised a preliminary objection on the maintainability of the petition in view of section 14 of Administrative Tribunals Act which deals with jurisdiction, powers and authority of the Central Administrative Tribunal.

The objection was raised in light of the fact that a group of civil service aspirants have already moved the CAT seeking reduction in the cut off from 33% to 23% for qualifying Part II (CSAT) exam of 2023 Civil Services Examination. However, the CAT on June 09 only issued notice on the plea and refused interim relief.

Earlier today, a division bench of the High Court, also comprising of Justice Jain, refused the interim relief and disposed of the petition against the Tribunal’s refusal to grant any interim relief.

“At the outset, I want the raise an objection on the maintainability of the writ petition in view of section 14 of Administrative Tribunals Act. A similar matter was listed before the division bench of this court today which travelled from the refusal of the Tribunal declining interim relief. The CAT has the jurisdiction. A single judge under Article 226 does not have the jurisdiction,” Kaushik said.

As the petitioners’ counsel began making submissions to counter UPSC’s objections, the court referred to a 2017 judgment of the Supreme Court in Vikas Rathi v. UPSC wherein the Apex Court refused to interfere with a similar petition raising identical questions.

Accordingly, the counsel appearing for the petitioners and UPSC said that they will assist the court on the next date of hearing on the query raised. Justice Jain then renotified the matter for hearing before the regular bench on Monday.

Title: Himanshu Kumar v. UPSC & Anr.