A group of three civil services aspirants has moved Supreme Court (SC) seeking an extra attempt at the civil services exam. The aspirants claim that they had to miss the civil services Mains exam because they had contracted Covid-19. Claiming lack of any mechanism from UPSC to allow Covid-19 positive aspirants to take exam, candidates want Court to intervene and allow them an extra attempt to take the papers they have missed.
Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan who has filled the petition on students’ behalf claims that these candidates could have lied and attended their exam. The petitioners said that they were tested positive for COVID-19 in the RTPCR test reports dated January 13, 14, and January 6. The plea said the petitioners could not give the UPSC mains examination after testing positive for COVID-19 and owing to the restrictions imposed under the strict quarantine guidelines of the government.
While two of the three petitioners had to leave the main exam, held from January 7 to 16, in-between after appearing in some initial papers, the third aspirant could not appear in any of the papers due to COVID.
A bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and C T Ravikumar is hearing the case. The bench said will hear the on March 7.
The petition highlights that there was the absence of any kind of policy of UPSC which could provide arrangements for such petitioners who were COVID positive during the span of mains examination or before it.
It claimed that the absence of policy and no arrangement to accommodate COVID-19 positive petitioners to appear in the civil service mains examination 2021 have violated their rights, including that of under Article 14 (equality before law) of the Constitution of India.
The petitioners have sought a direction to the UPSC to extend them an additional attempt to appear in the exam or in the alternate make some arrangement to appear in the rest of the papers, which they could not give, before the publication of the result.
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