Scores of civil service aspirants on 08.09.2010 staged a protest outside UPSC office in New Delhi demanding that cut-off marks for the preliminary examinations be made public.
Some protesters also continued their indefinite hunger strike at Jantar Mantar on the same issue, which began on four days ago.
The aspirants marched towards UPSC building near India Gate on the afternoon of 8.9.2010 and pasted posters there demanding transparency in the functioning of UPSC with regard to civil services examinations. “We demand that the cut-off marks be made public for the preliminary examinations, the results of which were published recently,” Anay Mishra, one of the protesters, said.
Dissatisfied with the evaluation process of the Union Public Service Commission, members of a student body, Youth for Justice, held a protest outside the commission on 8.09.2010. They demanded more transparency in the evaluation process of the UPSC.
The protesters submitted an RTI application to know the process through which “scaling” of a candidate is done — through scaling marks of students are reduced or increased arbitrarily.
Around 75 students, who took part in the protest, complained that the UPSC never reveals the process of scaling, unlike in some state level civil services exams. The state level exams, the students said, are more transparent.
The Youth for Justice has been demanding more transparency in the UPSC evaluation process since 2006. Today’s protest was planned after some 200 UPSC aspirants expressed concern over the schedule of the interviews, to be held later this month.
A student Vishal Vasvani said candidates who did well and were selected for various posts were given below average feedback in their interviews in the previous years.
Another member of the group, Ashwini, said he has names of over 40 students who haven’t got the interview calls despite making it to the interview last year. “People who have taken the exam more than 2-3 times are not getting any call, though they are the ones preparing since years,” he said.
Ashwini said the UPSC is “trying to escape from revealing information under the Right to Information Act”. “But we will seek justice not only for us, but for those who may appear in the exam in the coming years,” he said.
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