SC junks plea of civil services aspirants for extra attempt
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi:25.02.2021
The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed the plea of a group of civil services aspirants, who have exhausted the permissible number of attempts and are also hit by the age bar, for one more chance to take the test saying they were not prepared for the examination held in 2020 because of the Covid pandemic.
A bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar, Indu Malhotra and Ajay Rastogi said many examinations were conducted successfully during the pandemic and it would have a cascading effect on other examinations if the court allowed the plea of students for one more attempt.
"...there are large number of candidates who appeared in the various examinations in 2020 during Covid-19 pandemic and everyone must have faced some constraints in one way or the other and this court can take a judicial notice that these petitioners have appeared in the same pattern of examination in the previous years since 2015 and what is being claimed and prayed for under the guise of Covid-19 pandemic is nothing but a lame excuse in taking additional attempt to participate in the Civil Service Examination 2021," the bench said.
The court, however, clarified that its decision would not restrict the Centre in exercising its discretion in future to deal with the difficulties as projected to the court.
The bench passed the order on a batch of petitions filed by candidates seeking one more chance to appear for examination on the ground that they were "forced" to appear as the government turned down their plea to defer the exam.
The Centre had earlier told the court that it was agreeable to grant one more chance to those aspirants who took the exam last year during the pandemic and exhausted their number of attempts but said it would not grant another attempt to those hit by the age bar.
There were 3863 candidates who had exhausted their number of attempts while 2236 had hit the age bar.
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