CBI to question many officials of PCS-2015 batch

ALLAHABAD: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will once again question candidates selected in the Combined State/ Upper Subordinate Examination—2015, commonly known as PCS-2015, conducted by the Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC).

However, this time around questioning will take place at New Delhi-based CBI headquarters and not in Allahabad.

The CBI has served notices to around 15 such candidates, mostly now posted as SDMs, deputy SPs and on other posts, to appear at CBI headquarters for questioning next week, inform CBI officials well aware of the development.

Team of officials led by CBI SP Rajeev Ranjan and additional SP Chandrajeet will question these selected candidates, they add.

The CBI, which is probing recruitments conducted by UPPSC between April 1, 2012 and March 31, 2017 in UP, had on May 5 registered its first FIR against unknown ‘private persons’ and officials of UPPSC in this connecthe

tion. The FIR was registered by CBI deputy SP Satender Singh after CBI officials detected anomalies in the selections made in PCS-2015 conducted by UPPSC.

Earlier, CBI had also registered a preliminary enquiry on the allegations that unknown persons and unknown officials of UPPSC, committed irregularities in the examinations. As per officials, the CBI team has already prepared a long list of questions to be asked to the candidates.

These questions are based on the answers given by many candidates who were questioned in first round of questioning that the CBI officials had conducted at its camp office at irrigation department guest house in Allahabad in March.

At that time, many of these candidates were also asked to fill in a form. This round of questioning is expected to lead the officials for bigger action like formal arrests.

So far, the CBI which began its probe after arriving in Allahabad on January 25, has established that UPPSC had made recruitment on 521 posts through PCS2015 exam and in it moderation was done in compulsory subjects like general Hindi and essay.

UPPSC violated SC guidelines issued in case titled ‘Sanjay Singh Vs UPPSC’ vide order dated January 9, 2007, the CBI FIR states.

The probe has revealed that some candidates had marked unique features in their answer scripts which could easily lead to their identification during evaluation but none of the evaluators or UPPSC officials pointed this out and also did not deduct marks on this count, which, the CBI has claimed, shows ulterior motive of unknown UPPSC officials, a fact mentioned in the FIR.