The Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC) came under fire from the Madras High Court on Monday for continuing to repeat errors in question papers and answer keys even as it had been entrusted with the important task of recruiting for the government. According to The Hindu, Justice V Parthiban pulled up the personnel recruitment agency of the state for making mistakes in as many as 24 questions in the preliminary written examination conducted in March this year.
The judge reportedly wondered how the errors were repeated in spite of a warning issued by a Division Bench of the High Court in 2009. A decade earlier, the court had cautioned TNPSC to bear in mind the candidates who took the exam and their future, which depended on the selection.
The newspaper quoted the Justice as observing, “Despite the above observations of the Division Bench several years before, it appears that the commission has not taken cue from such caution by the court. If only the commission had taken into consideration the observations of the Division Bench in all seriousness, it could have avoided the defects that have crept in now. It appears that despite its past mistake, the commission has handled the present important selection of Group-I Services in a cavalier fashion. The credibility of the Commission would be at stake before the public at large if the mistakes are often repeated. A philosopher said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. The commission, which probably did not remember its past mistakes, has repeated the same in the present selection. It is needless to mention that by framing defective question and keys, it is possible that meritorious candidates lose their opportunity to be selected ultimately for public service.”
However, the judge rejected a petition to quash the final answer keys published by the TNPSC in April this year and the subsequent selection of candidates who qualified for the main examinations. According to The New Indian Express, the court reasoned that the Commission itself had identified the defects in the key answers and questions and had attempted to rectify its mistakes by setting up an expert panel. The petitioner did not qualify for the exams even after the revised marks were added.