Cuttack, Sept. 5: Orissa High Court refused to stay the process of re-evaluation of answer sheets of the Odisha Civil Service (Preliminary) Examination-2011, in which faulty questions had been detected in 18 of the 26 optional subjects.

The Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) is re-evaluating the answer sheets following directions of the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT).

The court expressed its disinclination to issue an interim stay order while articulating its concern over the delay in the completion of the Odisha Civil Service (OCS) Examination-2011 due to a major dispute over the evaluation of answer sheets of the preliminary exam.

A petition had challenged the SAT order and sought the quashing of the OCS (Preliminary) Exam-2011. An interim stay order was also sought when the petition came up for hearing yesterday.

Rourkela resident Priyambada Das, 34, who had failed to clear the preliminary test, challenged the SAT order in the high court alleging that the direction to give marks only to those candidates, who had attempted the wrong questions, was "self-contradictory" and "illegal".

"After a preliminary hearing, the division bench of Chief Justice D.H. Waghela and Justice Biswanath Rath admitted the petition, but refused to grant any interim relief and posted the matter to first week of October," OPSC counsel Pradipta Mohanty told The Telegraph .

The exam was held on January 19, 2014. About 35,200 candidates appeared for the test. Of these, 5,823 candidates were declared qualified on May 2, 2014, for the main examination. The main examination was held in September last year, while a dispute over the evaluation process was pending with SAT.

The dispute arose after the OPSC published the preliminary examination results by giving grace marks to candidates for the wrong questions in 18 of the optional subjects.

On June 18, SAT had quashed the evaluation process and directed the OPSC to come up with a fresh merit list after re-evaluating the answer sheets of the 18 subjects by awarding full marks to only those, who had attempted the incorrect questions.

In its order, the SAT bench, consisting of acting chairman B.K. Dash and member (administrative) S.K. Dash, observed: "The object of conducting the examination is to eliminate less meritorious candidates. In the event, full marks is awarded to all the candidates uniformly, who have appeared in the subjects irrespective of whether they have attempted the wrong question or not, as has been done, it would amount to bringing less meritorious candidates to the main stream, which amounts to showing undue favour."

The exam is being conducted to fill up 364 Class II posts for the Odisha Administrative Service (30), Odisha Police Service (15), Odisha Co-operative Service (10), Odisha Revenue Service (100) and Odisha Taxation and Accounts Service (209).