Patna High Court on Tuesday set aside the results of mains examination for appointment of secretariat assistant and supervisor because four questions were wrong.

The bench of Justice Mihir Kumar Jha, while hearing a bunch of petitions from unsuccessful candidates, directed the State Staff Selection Commission to publish the results afresh within three months after deleting the four wrong questions.

The court asked the state government to make appointment to the post of secretariat assistant and other supervisory services on the basis of a fresh merit list as recommended by the commission after a fresh evaluation.

The mains examination was conducted to fill the posts of 3,285 secretariat assistants and 14 supervisory cadre.

The court on Tuesday passed the judgment on petitions filed by Dhananjay Kumar and others. They sought direction to set aside the results of the mains examination conducted by the State Staff Selection Commission for appointment to the posts of secretariat assistant and supervisors.

Petitioner’s counsel Dinu Kumar and Abhinav Srivastava submitted that several questions and model answer keys were found to be wrong and the commission had declared the result on the basis of the wrong questions and their answer keys.

Contending that the examination was not conducted in a fair manner, counsel Kumar submitted that the OMR answer sheets were tampered with in the examinations conducted by commission and hence the exam should be cancelled.

Advertisement for appointment of the secretariat assistants and supervisors was published in 2010. A total of 3.87 lakh candidates appeared in the preliminary exam.

On January 27 this year, 27,289 candidates appeared in the mains exam. The final result was declared on Feb- ruary 6.

Kumar said the economic offences unit of the state police had conducted raids on the premises of the State Staff Selection Commission and found tampered answer sheets.

The economic offences wing lodged a case in October 2012. Few people were also arrested during the economic offences unit raid. They admitted to tampering with the OMR sheets after taking them from the candidates.

The counsel submitted that all the exams conducted by the State Staff Selection Commission — for appointment auditors, junior engineers, excise sub-inspectors and others — in the past two years have been tampered with.

HC orders

Direction to State Staff Selection Commission for publishing fresh results for appointment of secretariat assistants and supervisors within three months after deleting four wrong questions

Direction to state government to make appointment to post of secretariat assistant and other supervisory services on basis of fresh merit list as recommended by commission after a fresh evaluation