The Supreme Court on Thursday gave the Central government two weeks’ time to reconsider afresh the demand made by the civil services aspirants who were unable to appear for their Main exam in January after falling ill with COVID-19 for another chance.
A Bench led by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar referred to a Parliamentary Standing Committee report of March 24 that had recommended the government to grant such candidates an extra attempt and corresponding age relaxation.
The stand of the government, represented by Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, before the court and the parliamentary committee had been that giving another chance to these candidates would risk havoc and was not feasible.
Agony caused by pandemic
But the committee had persisted in favour of the candidates in Parliament, urging the government to remember the “untold agony and insurmountable sufferings” the pandemic had caused many in the past two years. It recounted how the “whole of India had come to a standstill, lives and livelihoods got disrupted and the student community was also adversely affected”.
“Keeping in view the hardships faced by the student community during the first and second COVID waves, the committee recommends the government to change its mind and sympathetically consider the demand of Civil Services Exams aspirants and grant an extra attempt with corresponding age relaxation to all candidates,” the panel report had said.
On Thursday, the court, by putting the government on a two-week deadline, made sure the parliamentary committee’s efforts at persuasion did not hit a wall.
“The government’s regulation was that people with COVID-19 should not step out. We obeyed. We could have kept quiet, gone and written our exams and infected everyone. We did the right thing... Now we want the government to do the right thing by us,” senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, for the candidates, argued impassionately.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan said these were candidates who had passed the Preliminary exam. Very few get through to the Main stage. “It is a life’s achievement... They should not lose their opportunity just because they fell ill,” he argued.
DoPT affidavit
In a recent affidavit, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) informed the Supreme Court that it was “not feasible to change the existing provisions regarding the number of attempts and age-limit in respect of the civil services examination”. It had submitted that decisions on compensatory or extra attempt or age relaxation were a “policy matter”.
“Any relaxation to age-limit and number of permissible attempts due to COVID-19 pandemic could lead to similar demands being made by the other categories of candidates. It will also impinge on the chances of other candidates...” it stated.
