RTI reveals mess in state civil service exam results

Nidhi Sharma | TNN, New Delhi: What civil services aspirants had suspected all along has finally been proven right. Information provided under Right to Information Act by Chhattisgarh State Public Service Commission on scores of preliminary examinations reveals faulty number crunching.
An RTI application was filed by Ravinder Singh, a resident of Rajanandgaon, in which he sought information on marks of qualifying candidates who had appeared for the State Public Service examination 2003. The reply of the commission shows startling results. A candidate, Rajesh Kumar, has actually got more marks than the total number of marks he was evaluated for. Out of 300, he got 303.91 marks.
A civil services aspirant has to go through a longdrawn out process for selection. First, he has to take preliminary examination, which consists of objective-type questions. For this, candidates are given subject options like political science, military science, sociology and public administration. Since candidates opt for different subjects, the marks need to be ‘‘scaled’’ to bring them at par and then evaluate their performance. All commissions have to follow a certain ‘‘scaling formula’’ for this purpose.
It is this scaling process that is now under the scanner. Sample this, Gerjesh Pratap Singh got 166 out of 300 in his first optional subject statistics and 233 in the second option of military science. However, after scaling, his marks in military science was ‘‘zero’’. His grand total of 399 was reduced to 135.94 after scaling. He was obviously not selected. Rajiv Singh Chauhan, who had Hindi literature as first option and military science as second optional subject, was luckier. He had got comparable marks before scaling — 179 and 182, which became 180.17 and 188.01 after the scaling process. Gerjesh Pratap isn’t the only victim of this arbitrary scaling process.
Yagwendra Singh’s marks were scaled from 193 and 135 in the two options to zero in both the options. The entire process of selection of Chhattisgarh State Public Service Commission is already under scanner of the state’s anti-corruption bureau. The commission had outsourced its scaling process to Methodox — a private agency. Zonal manager of the agency, Anandi Srivastava, said: ‘‘The process is under investigation so I do not want to comment.’’
nidhi.sharma@timesgroup.com
Publication: Times Of India Delhi; Date:2007 Mar 19; Section:Times Nation; Page Number 12