UPSC 2020 Preliminaries: On Wednesday, the Supreme Court dismissed the request to postpone the civil service preliminary examination scheduled for October 4. The petition was submitted by some civil service applicants who wanted the UPSC preliminaries to be postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and flooding in various parts of the country.
The 3-judge bench of justices AM Khanwilkar, BR Gavai, and Krishna Murari allowed UPSC to conduct the exam while maintaining all Covid-related SOPs issued by the Home Office.
The court did not allow separate isolation rooms to appear in the exam for Covid-positive candidates, saying that medical protocol prescribed isolation and quarantine for such individuals. UPSC informed the court that anyone with cough and cold symptoms will sit in a separate room.
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Some candidates who gave their last try and face disqualification from the age bar to appear next year urged the court to be allowed to relax this rule if they were unable to appear due to Covid.
The court asked the Center to make a decision on whether this was possible and hoped that the department in question would respond quickly to the call.
The other objections about crown warriors unable to appear, candidates unable to prepare due to library closings, and lack of available transportation were lacking substance by the court.
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The court ordered that candidates traveling for the purpose of taking an exam will be allowed to travel between states after seeing their admission cards.
The court also refused to accept a suggestion from the petitioners to merge this year’s preliminaries with those of next year. The bank said: “We are not impressed. We agree with UPSC that using this suggestion will have a cascading effect on other exams performed by UPSC. “
The 2020 Public Administration preliminary examination was scheduled for May 31, which had to be postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. On June 5, UPSC announced that it will conduct the preliminary examination on October 4 at 2,569 centers in 72 cities across the country.
A total of more than 10.58 lakh candidates have applied for the exam this year.
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