After taking note of the recurring blunders and large scale irregularities Supreme Court asked the Punjab and Haryana High Court & Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) to provide explanation why the exams held for selection of judges of Haryana should not be scrapped.
A sample question in the paper which was asked was “Raju is cutting wood with an axe at a place where children are playing. The axe flies off and kills a nearby child. What offence will Raju be liable for?” And the options offered were: 1) Murder 2) Culpable homicide not amounting to murder 3) Death due to negligence 4) No offence
Many candidates aspiring to be judges had chosen “death due to negligence” and quite interestingly original answer sheet too had contained option 3 as the correct answer. For this few candidates objected and stated that the question was unclear as it did not clearly mention whether the axe fell accidentally or was thrown and so answer was revised to option 4, No Offence.
Many candidates had said that this was a blatant error and petitioned the Punjab and Haryana High Court. They demanded a review of the decision which was taken by the committee that was set up by the high court. But the court did not entertain the argument and so aggrieved candidates had to appeal before the Supreme Court challenging the revision of the answer sheet. Along with this the candidates challenged 6 more questions and put it before the Apex Court.
Counsel for the petitioners Advocate Sourabh Goel stated that the reason that the high court had given while dismissing the challenge was “ex-facie fallacious” and he also said that the court had wrongly deleted few questions from the exam.
Preliminary examination of the Haryana Civil Service (Judicial Branch) was held on January 10, 2015 and the exam was conducted by High court and HSPC for a total post of 119 of Civil Judge which was taken by 16,186 candidates.
by Sushma Javare.