The Telangana State Public Services Commission (TSPSC) on Monday, February 19, canceled the notification of Group-I services, which was issued on April 26, 2022 under the previous BRS government. A fresh notification is likely to be issued shortly.
“The Commission has deliberated in detail about the various issues concerning the Notification No. 04/2022, Dated:26/04/2022 for Group-l Services. Having taken totality of the circumstances into account, the Commission has decided to cancel the Notification No.04/2022 issued on 26/04/2022 for 503 vacancies in public interest,” the TSPSC notification issued on Monday read.
The decision to cancel the notification was taken after the Supreme Court allowed the TSPSC to withdraw the Special Leave Petition (SLP) against the High Court’s decision to cancel the preliminary examination. The newly-formed Congress government had submitted a plea to withdraw the SPL challenging the Telangana High Court’s order.
A total of 503 vacancies were announced earlier. However, a year later, a scandal broke out when it was found that the question papers for the TSPSC exams were leaked, leading to agitations by students. Two employees of TSPSC allegedly copied folders containing question papers of various exams from computers and sold them to aspirants. Several of them involved in the crime were arrested by the Special Investigation Team.
Despite protests over the integrity of the investigation, TSPSC initially conducted the exam on June 11, 2023 for the second time in which 2.33 lakh candidates appeared. However, they were canceled by the High Court following a petition by the Congress party’s student wing NSUI. The NSUI pointed out procedural errors in the examination as the biometrics of some candidates were not registered.
According to reports, the Congress government is considering issuing a fresh notification by adding more posts.
The paper leak came to light when TSPSC complained to the Begum Bazar police on March 11, 2022. P Praveen Kumar, who was working as an Assistant Section Officer (ASO) and Rajashekar Reddy (35), a network administrator with the Telangana State Technology Services, outsourced to the Commission – are the primary accused in the case. “Both of them managed to steal the data from the computer of the confidential section using the IT knowledge of Rajasekhar Reddy. They transferred the data to a USB drive belonging to Praveen Kumar’s and took a printout of the (Civil) exam paper and General Studies paper,” police had said earlier.