Orissa High Court Dismisses Plea Seeking Cancellation Of Odisha Judicial Services Preliminary Examination 2023

The Division Bench of Justice Sangam Kumar Sahoo and Justice Chittaranjan Dash was hearing the writ petition filed by some of the candidates who appeared in the preliminary examination of the Judicial Service examination this year, held on 22.06.2024.

Subsequent to the examination, the Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) had published answer-keys for the questions within a few days of the examination.

Due to large-scale dissatisfaction expressed by a number of candidates appearing in the examination, the OPSC had opened a window inviting the candidates to file their objections to the defective questions/answer-keys with supporting authorities/documents etc. The OPSC has, however, not published the final answer-keys till date.

The main contention of the petitioners was that 15 questions were either incorrectly framed or the Commission has provided wrong answer-keys to such questions. The petition further stated that in some questions, there was more than one correct option. Further, some questions were also incomplete and a few also came from out of the prescribed syllabus.

The petitioners further contended that due to such defective questions, they were confused and lost a substantial part of examination time by ascertaining the wrongly set questions and the corresponding erroneous answers. Thus, they prayed the Court to direct the OPSC to conduct the preliminary examination afresh or to grant grace marks for the incorrect questions.

When the matter was taken up for hearing, the Bench queried as to whether the results of such preliminary examination is declared or not. The counsel for the petitioners conveyed that the results are yet to be published.

The Division Bench, therefore, expressed disinclination to interfere in the process as the matter is pending with the OPSC, which is expected to address the objections filed by the candidates so also to declare the results.

Accordingly, the writ petition was disposed of.

Case Title: Samata Samantaray & Ors. v. State of Odisha & Anr.

Case No: W.P.(C) No. 17688 of 2024