Rajasthan High Court lifts stay on RAS mains exam

JAIPUR: The Rajasthan High Court on Friday lifted the stay on the Rajasthan Administrative Services (RAS) mains exam and directed the Rajasthan Public Service Commission (RPSC) to address grievances of the candidates by forming an expert committee.
The mains exam was earlier stayed following allegations of irregularities in preparing the results of RAS preliminary exam.
The order for this from the single bench of justice M N Bhandari was onpetitions by Ashok Kumar Meena and others who alleged that the result was declared without inviting objections to the answer key of preliminary exam-2013.
On January 30, the single bench stayed the mains exam till February 5 and asked the RPSC chairman to appear before the court.
The high court on Friday directed the RPSC to invite objections from candidates from February 8 to 11 with supporting documents and constitute a new expert committee to scrutinize the objections and submit report within seven days. It directed the RPSC to stick to the time-table, as far as possible, for the mains exam that is to begin from February 25.
The court order said if there is any difference in the merit after attending to the objections, the RPSC should declare the revised merit list. The fresh expert committee, however, should not be given the reports of the earlier expert committee and should work independent of all earlier decisions.
RPSC chairman Lalit K Panwar, who appeared in court on Friday, apprised the single bench of the initiatives taken by the Commission to restore its credibility. He claimed that after assuming office he took several measures to restore the organisation's prestige and instill people's confidence in it. Panwar said online exam was introduced to check the menace of question papers being leaked and that in case of subjective exams, the mean (average) of two expert committees was being considered to calculate the merit list. The chairman said RPSC was considering to adopt UPSC pattern in its examinations to avoid unwanted controversies and delays.
In an affidavit, the RPSC said that nine subject experts who prepared question papers for Grade-II teachers exam 2008, Hindi Lecturer exam 2010, RAS exam 2012 and Homeopathic doctors exam 2010, have been blacklisted. eom