You can't commit such blunders: Supreme Court pulls up Orissa PSC for...

The Supreme Court on Friday criticized the Orissa Public Service Commission (OPSC) for its refusal to acknowledge a mistake made in the evaluation of a judicial service aspirant's answer sheet [The Chairman, Odisha Public Service Commission vs. Jyotirmayee Dutta]..A bench comprising Justices Surya Kant, Dipankar Datta, and Vijay Bishnoi was hearing a plea by OPSC against a High Court order which directed it to pay ₹1 lakh compensation to the affected candidate.The Supreme Court orally observed that such blunders in exam evaluation must not be overlooked and that the Commission should be held accountable." You, as an examination body, commit these kinds of blunders - you should be taken to task. How will the young generation have faith and trust in you? ... This Commission is adamant. Some arrogant elements sitting there. You are still adamant, telling that there is no mistake ... Commission thinks of itself too high. Case dismissed," Justice Kant said..The OPSC's counsel, however, urged the top court to at least expunge adverse remarks made against the commission by the Orissa High Court. "Had you at the first instance accepted that 'there is something wrong on our part and we would examine it', the matter would have ended," Justice Dipankar Datta replied.Nevertheless, the Court eventually clarified that the High Court's adverse remarks against the Commission must not be treated as a precedent.“The observations made in the impugned judgment are in the context of the mistake detected in the evaluation of one of the question papers and are not to be treated as precedent for future cases," it said, while dismissing the appeal..The case concerned the 2022 edition of the Odisha Judicial Service Examination. A candidate who took the written exam moved the Orissa High Court, contending that she had missed the cut-off to proceed to the interview round because the evaluators for the exam had omitted to evaluate an answer. She had missed the cut-off for the viva voce round by only five marks. The High Court sent the answer script to independent experts for evaluation and found merit in her claim that the evaluators of OPSC had neglected to evaluate an answer in the candidate's paper. The Court, however, also found that the candidate would still not progress to the interview round of the exam, as her score for the answer in question was not enough for her to make the cut-off. Nevertheless, the High Court took a serious view of the OPSC's lapse and said that such errors in the evaluation of judicial exams are unacceptable. It observed that competitive exams play a crucial role in shaping careers and require years of intense preparation, financial effort, and personal sacrifice. The High Court stressed that the evaluation process must adhere to the strictest standards of scrutiny and quality control.It also ordered the OPSC to pay ₹1 lakh as compensation to the candidate who had flagged the evaluation error in her answer script. This was challenged by the OPSC before the Supreme Court, which dismissed the appeal today. .[Read Live Coverage]