UPSC tells Supreme Court impossible to defer exams further, matter to be heard on Wednesday

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KEY STORY

  • The three-judge bench of the Supreme Court today posted the matter of postponment of UPSC Prelims exams 2020 till Wednesday.
  • Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) tells Supreme Court that it’s impossible to defer Civil Services exams any further. UPSC asked to file an affidavit by tomorrow.
  • Supreme Court was hearing a plea filed by UPSC aspirants, seeking postponement of upcoming Civil Services (prelims) Exam’20.
  • Without issuing notice, a bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and Sanjiv Khanna agreed to hear the matter and granted liberty to the petitioner to serve advance copy of the petition on the Standing Counsel for the Union Public Service Commission as well as on the Standing Counsel for the Central Agency representing Union of India through email/online.
  • On September 24 after the hearing, advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava, appearing for the petitioners, had told media that notices have been issued to respondents for their response. Later in the day, the order was uploaded on the apex court website which made it clear that the judges have only agreed to hear the matter without issuing any notice.

CONCLUSION

  • The plea has been filed by 20 UPSC aspirants against conducting of the Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination on October 4.
  • According to the plea this seven hours long Offline exam, will be taken by approximately six lakh aspirants at test centres in 72 cities across the country.
  • “ Conducting the aforesaid examination across India at such perilous time, is nothing else but putting lives of lakhs of young students (including Petitioners herein) at utmost risk and danger of disease and death. Also, the natural calamities like flood, incessant rain, landslides etc. are likely to directly affect the life and health of the Petitioners and many similarly situated students.
  • “Hence, the impugned Revised Calendar is utterly arbitrary, unreasonable, whimsical and patently violative of the “Right to Health” and “Right to Life” of the Petitioners herein and lakhs of similarly situated students, under Article 21,” the petition stated.
  • “It is pertinent to mention here that despite alarming spurt in COVID-19 pandemic, UPSC did not increase the number of Examination Centres, resulting into a situation where many candidates from rural areas will be forced to travel for around 300-400 Kilometres, in order to reach to their Examination Centres and there will be high probability of such aspirants, getting affected while using public transportation for such travel,” the plea said.

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