The Jharkhand High Court on October 8 completed its hearing on the state’s decision to cancel the JSSC CGL exam and reserved its verdict, after the state said irregularities were so wide that genuine candidates could not be separated from others.
The case turns on one choice. The state says that the investigation is incomplete, so it cannot say which candidates were involved and which are innocent, and it has cancelled the exam. The petitioners say that cancelling the whole exam without separating the two groups is improper.
The court’s remarks, as reported, cut both ways. Aaj Tak reported that the investigation so far does not contain solid evidence of a pre-exam leak, and also that the whole exam can be cancelled under Supreme Court guidelines if large-scale cheating is proven.
On October 7, the court said that candidates selected on merit must receive justice, and expressed concern for about 2,700 successful candidates, but also said that it cannot ignore the state’s description of systemic failure.
The judgment has no announced date, and the investigation, with more than 28 arrests according to the state, is still going on.
The state also submitted a sealed report to the court on October 7.
It argued that, because the probe is ongoing, it is not possible to say which candidates were involved and which are innocent.
The state has described the examination system as suffering from systemic failure, and the court said it cannot ignore that aspect, according to ETV Bharat.
The petitioners argued that there is no proof that the paper leaked from an examination centre.
They said probable questions were given to 28 candidates in Nepal, of whom 10 were selected, and that the High Court’s order withholding those 10 results was upheld by the Supreme Court.
They said the SIT has been investigating for over two years without filing a chargesheet, according to ETV Bharat.
Jharkhand High Court, Ranchi (file image), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0