Cuttack, June 23: Orissa High Court today imposed restriction on result declaration of the Odisha Judicial Service (OJS)–2015 preliminary written examination, which had come under judicial scrutiny following allegations of “erroneous questions”.

The Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) had conducted the preliminary examination on May 31. The court was hearing a petition seeking relief for the erroneous question.

Madhumala Bisoyee, 37, of Jatni and 18 others, who had taken the preliminary test, filed the petition alleging that “a total of 15 questions out of 100 were erroneous”. 

“The single judge bench of Justice B.R. Sarangi posted the matter to after two weeks for hearing and directed the OPSC not to publish till then the OJS – 2015 preliminary examination results,” petitioners’ counsel Bibhu Prasad Tripathy told The Telegraph.

“The court issued the interim order after the OPSC had filed an affidavit in response to our petition,” Tripathy said.
In the affidavit, OPSC additional secretary Ashok Kumar Mohanty stated that an expert committee had been formed to assess the correctness of questions and answers of the preliminary written test, and accordingly, comments and observations from the candidates had been invited online by June 18. The panel was scheduled to meet on June 22 to examine the comments and observations of the candidates received online. After receipt of the recommendation from the expert committee, evaluation would be undertaken, Mohanty said in the affidavit.

The petitioners’ sought withholding of preliminary examination results for the main examination and direction to the OPSC “to award grace marks for all the erroneous questions”.

In the OJS-2015 preliminary examination, candidates were asked to appear one paper of 100 marks with objective type questions of multiple choices. There were hundred questions of one mark each with negative marks of .25 marks allotted to a question for every wrong answer.

The petitioners claimed that due to 15 erroneous questions, “they are now unsure whether they will qualify for the written examination” and the erroneous questions had “created an unnecessary hitch” in their aspirations “as well as unnecessary mental agony”. “Several questions set in the examination paper were not only out of syllabus, but also contained grammatical and typographical errors and contained questions, in which the answers were not there in the options,” the petition also alleged.

The OJS-2015 competitive examination is being held for direct recruitment to the cadre of civil judges. The OPSC had invited applications from law graduates for 69 posts (24 reserved for women) through an advertisement on March 12 and 2,166 candidates were allowed to take the preliminary examination. In the advertisement, the OPSC had specified that candidates, who secured not less than 40 per cent marks, would be eligible for the main examination. In the case of scheduled caste and scheduled tribe candidates, the cut-off mark was set at 35 per cent.