Even as the Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) is gearing up for conducting interviews for the 2018-batch candidates who qualified the Group-I Mains examination from June 15, a group of aggrieved candidates, who wrote the preliminary exams in Telugu language and are fighting a case in the Supreme Court, have questioned the “hurry” with which the process is being carried out.
“The APPSC is in a hurry to complete the interviews even as a case pertaining to glaring mistakes in translating the prelims question paper in Telugu language is pending in the apex court,” says Sheikh Shanawaz, one of the petitioners.
‘Glaring mistakes’
According to the petitioners, of the nearly 58,000 candidates who appeared for the preliminary examinations on May 26, 2019, more than 50,000 wrote the test in Telugu language and faced setbacks on account of ‘glaring mistakes’ in the translation of questions from English to Telugu.
“Of the total 240 questions, there are 109 translation errors in 79 questions,” he said, pointing to the two versions of the question papers.
“The APPSC received 147 objections pertaining to the initial key. It only shows the enormity of the problem,” says Mr. Shanawaz, informing that in its counter filed in the apex court, the APPSC had said that since the examination system needed utmost secrecy, services of professors were engaged to make the question paper in English while the question paper translated was directly sent to the printing and no other check on quality of translation was done.
To this, the court had observed that since English is not the mother tongue and that is the reason why the question paper is printed in the regional languages and that the accountability for the correct question paper in both or more languages had to he present, as otherwise there was no purpose in having the examination in regional language if only the English version was to be seen.
The next hearing is due on July 11. However, the APPSC apparently intends to complete the process at the earliest, the petitioners allege.
“There were some technical issues which we tried to address. After the prelims, we have conducted the Mains, as per the court orders. Now, we are ready for the interview round,” says a source from the APPSC. “The candidates who are not qualified feel aggrieved and go to the court. This goes on in circles and we need to break it somewhere,” adds the source.
The petitioners, meanwhile, argue that the APPSC should first ‘clarify on the anomalies before taking up the interview sessions as high stakes are involved in this examination’.
