KPSC notification: Karnataka HC orders notice to govt

The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday ordered notice to the state government while hearing petition that sought probe into KPSC's alleged irregularities in the recruitment to the gazetted probationary posts (Group A and B) .

The writ petition by B K Sudhanva Bandolkar and 14 other candidates was heard by a division bench of Justice S N Satyanarayana and Justice H P Sandesh on Tuesday.

The petitioners have sought CBI investigation into the irregularities in the recruitment process of the Karnataka Public Service Commission and requested the court to stay the final selection list.

The court ordered notice to KPSC Secretary and staff as well as the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms, seeking their reply within two weeks.

Advocate for the petitioners D R Ravishankar contended that there were several irregularities in the digital evaluation of the answer sheets for the 2015 batch. "A fact finding committee comprising experts cyber crime division should be set up," the petioners staed, requesting the court to direct that the investigation be handed over to the CBI.

The petitioners claimed that marks on several answer sheets have been changed to favour some candidates. "The password of superuser control unit has been used repeatedly to commit the irregularity," the applicants alleged.

The petition stated that only the chief examination controller will have the authority to use the super user control unit password. "However, many people have used this password. The KPSC is refusing to release the individual marks of the written exams. Information is not given for even the applications filed under RTI," they said.

The KPSC had invited application for 428 gazetted probationary posts in 2017. The preliminary exam was conducted in August followed by the main exams in December.

The results of the mains were notified on January 2019. In August, 2,123 candidates were called for interview in the ratio of 1:5. The final selection list was released in January 2020.

As many as 8,500 candidates wrote the main exam with the digital evaluation taking more than 2 years.