[Nellie N Manpoong]
NAHARLAGUN, Sep 27: After the commerce candidates, 221 candidates of various other subjects who had appeared for the prelims of the Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Combined Competitive Examination (APPSCCE) on Thursday filed a petition in the Itanagar permanent bench of the Gauhati High Court here.
The petitioners include candidates who had appeared for the optional papers of geography, law, philosophy, civil engineering, public administration, history, etc.
The candidates have sought that the Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) either maintain transparency and provide accurate clarification on all the anomalies highlighted or hold fresh examinations.
Also seeking suspension of the mains examination until the commission provides appropriate reasons, the candidates said the APPSC had earlier held fresh examinations, on 29 July, 2018, following similar complaints after the first prelims held on 26 November, 2017, and asked why it could not do it now.
“The commission had earlier brought out subject-wise anomalies, and then APPSC Secretary Onit Panyang had issued an order stating that there were sufficient grounds to order for cancellation of the examination held on 26 November, 2017. The grounds are the same now. In fact, it is on a larger scale now,” said a candidate.
The candidates also said the geography and law optional papers had several questions from the NET (JRF) examination-2014, while the law and civil engineering papers had out-of-syllabus questions.
Law and philosophy papers, they claimed, also had a lack of moderation of assertion and reasoning.
In the history paper, at least 55 questions were copied from the website www.cbsenetuge.com, while public administration had over 70 questions picked sequentially out of a civil service guide book.
Some anomalies were also pointed out in the general studies paper, besides typographical errors.
Citing these and more reasons, the candidates claimed that there was apprehension of leakage of papers as the “margin in pass percentage of various subjects was huge.”
No candidate has qualified from the statistics, philosophy, mathematics and chemistry papers, while commerce (.25%), law (.77%), physics (.58%), and electrical engineering (.58%) have representation of less than one percent each. The highest number of candidates who qualified is in the animal husbandry & veterinary science (28.57%), agriculture (16.16%), and psychology (9.67%) papers, the candidates informed.
They also claimed that declaration of the second prelims results on 16 August (where 76 candidates from geography ‘C’ series qualified) was in violation of Clause 11 of Schedule 2 of the APPSCC Rules 2001, as the commission could apply this schedule only before declaration of the result.
The first prelims result was declared on 2 August, 2018.
“The commission is yet to learn from its past mistakes. If the commission is not wrong then it should have no trouble in publishing the answer keys. Several states across the country publish the answer keys and invite objections from candidates. The candidates are asked to provide evidence for claims and appropriate action is taken accordingly. Why can’t our state commission do that? Revealing answer keys is not a matter of national security,” said the candidates.
Meanwhile, the court has listed the case for hearing on 28 September, 2018, at the high court here.
