Close on the heels of the corruption allegations emerging in the recruitment process of Odisha Staff Selection Commission (OSSC), charges of irregularities have now been levelled against the evaluation process of answer sheets in Odisha Administrative Service (OAS) Examination.
Rajat Kumar Mishra, an OPSC candidate from Dhamnagar in Bhadrak district had appeared the OAS exam in 2015 but could not make it to the final merit list despite doing well in the mains and the interview round.
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Rajat says that he later filed an application before the Commission to get a copy of his answer sheet to see what went wrong. Though he got a delayed response after a year in 2016, he was shocked to find that the mark awarded to him in the sheet (117) was later changed to 50 without citing any reason.
When he knocked the doors of the OPSC to know the truth behind the reduction in his marks, he alleged that he did not get any help.
“The examiner had awarded 117 in the answer sheet but the score was later changed to 50. Though everyone is admitting that there was a mistake in the evaluation, I could not get justice. However, the concerned authorities told that the marks awarded to me earlier were also not enough to crack the examination,” alleged Rajat.
After thorough review, Rajat discovered that one of the candidates, who cleared the examination in 2017, did not appear one paper and despite that his name featured in the merit list.
Citing the incident as unfortunate, Rajat said the candidate and the concerned authorities are not able to keep any exact answer to justify the goof-up.
He further alleged, “In 2018, I had appeared the prelim examinations and found that the question paper and the answer key both were wrong. I could not clear the exam by 0.5 marks due to the mistake committed by the OPSC. I came to know about it in 2019 following the announcement of the results,” he said.
It may be noted that the OPSC is already under fire from the Odisha Civil Services (OCS) aspirants as the dates of the Prelim Exam-2020 this year is clashing with several other State and national-level examinations, including the UPSC viva-voce to be held at New Delhi.
Though UPSC had in advance scheduled the interview dates of short-listed candidates from August 2 to September 22, the OPSC has fixed to hold the prelims on August 27, which was announced recently by the Commission.
Besides, the Combined Graduate Level (CGL) exam and Assistant Executive Engineer (AEE) exam have been scheduled on August 24, Revenue Inspector (RI) exam on August 29, respectively.