by Umar Khurshid
Srinagar: With both qualified and dropped candidates who appeared for Kashmir Administrative Service (KAS) hitting the streets, blaming each other of wrongdoing, the issue has snowballed into a major controversy. The candidates who qualified the prelims and then mains, and were set to appear for the interview, recently staged a protest in Srinagar, blaming those who couldn’t qualify of “false propaganda”. “They are wrongly projecting the entire issue. There was no mass error in the exams as they claim,” said a student who qualified the mains exams. “The entire exam process was transparent without any doubt,” he said.
The candidates said that they have been preparing for KAS exam for many years and finally qualified it, “but some of the candidates who failed have got a stay order from the court due to which our interview is not being conducted. We request to the concerned authorities to look into the matter,” said another candidate who has made it till interview level.
The candidates have appealed the court to withdraw the stay order so that the candidates waiting for years will not suffer anymore. The protesting candidates said that some candidates questioned the digital marking system only after they failed to qualify, which questions the credibility of the resentment of these candidates.
“We ask the authorities to expedite the process and call the qualified students for interviews immediately,” said a student. “It has become a norm in Kashmir to question the process if one fails to qualify,” he said.
Interestingly, Public Service Commission (PSC) held a press conference on December 17, 2018, and made it clear that discrepancies in Combined Competitive (Mains) Examination-2016 are completely unwarranted, J&K Public Service Commission (JKPSC) said it will, still, provide an opportunity to the aggrieved candidates to project their concerns by making a formal representation to the Commission.
The presser was addressed by the Chairman, JKPSC, Latief-uz-Zaman Deva at a presser in Srinagar. He was flanked by Controller Examinations, Khalid Majeed and Secretary JKPSC, Rajesh Sharma.
The chairman asked the candidates to mail a formal representation to the Commission within 3 days mentioning their Roll Number and Name so that re-verification vis-a-vis the evaluated scripts is done, as a matter of abundant caution.
