Andhra Pradesh High Court orders APPSC to conduct 2018 Group-I Mains exam afresh

The Andhra Pradesh High Court.
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Justice Nimmagadda Venkateswarlu of the Andhra Pradesh High Court has directed the Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) to conduct afresh the Group-1 (Mains) examination, the impugned notification for which was issued in the year 2018, and has set aside the list of eligible candidates thereof dated May 26, 2022.

He also instructed that the answer papers should be valued in strict accordance with the APPSC Rules and the process of selection completed within six months from the date of receipt of a copy of the present order.

The relief claimed by the petitioners was to quash the list of eligible candidates (dated May 26, 2022) and to release a fresh list of eligible candidates for interview in accordance with law after proper manual evaluation, by holding the action of APPSC in not releasing the first re-evaluation conducted prior to February, 2022 and releasing the results based on defective re-evaluation by excluding 62% of the previously eligible candidates and several Telugu medium candidates without any basis and rationality as  illegal and arbitrary.

Senior advocate S. Satyanarayana Prasad represented the APPSC while advocate Jandhyala Ravi Shankar appeared for the petitioners, who argued that the evaluation of answer papers was done twice against the rules only to correct wrong answers of certain preferred candidates and that certain other rules framed by the APPSC were also violated.

Meanwhile, the State government has assured the selected Group-1 candidates that it would appeal against the High Court judgment and secure the future of the selected candidates who had already joined the government service and are working.