Candidates want delhi judicial examination to be scrapped
Several allegations of ‘corruption, favouritism and nepotism’ have been sent to the Centre.
The DJS 2014 examination process has got caught up in a controversy after Union Law Minister D.V. Sadanand Gowda wrote to the Delhi High Court asking it to the look into allegations of “corruption, favouritism and nepotism” in the examination after the Law Ministry received numerous complaints with documented evidence of alleged corruption. Two of the 15 selected candidates are daughters of a sitting Delhi High Court judge. In fact, Gowda’s letter also mentions that some of the complaints received by the ministry state that Delhi HC judges were involved in the preparation of question papers, evaluation of answer sheets and the interview process. In his correspondence with the Delhi High Court, Gowda has stated that the aggrieved candidates have alleged that the answer sheets of the DJS 2014 were evaluated by judges whose sons, daughters or relatives took the examination.
The court, in a reply to an RTI query from a DJS aspirant, has stated that there was no fixed criteria for marking the answers: “The marks are awarded by the examiner to every candidate according to his/her performance in answering the questions.” The RTI reply also stated that the court has not prescribed any model answers for the four papers that candidates answer in the main examination.
The court needs to fill 80 vacancies for district and sessions judges. The DJS has three rounds — the written preliminary test, the written main test and the interview. The preliminary round of DJS 2014 was held on 1 June 2014 and the mains were conducted on 10-11 October.
“It took the High court more than one year to come out with the mains results, although they had to evaluate just 2,600 answer scripts. The UPSC, which conducted the 2014 IAS mains, checked about 1.5 lakh answer scripts in less than four months. Why this delay?” asked one an aspirant.
Even more startling is the fact that out of the 64 sitting judges from 11 different states who appeared for this examination, including 10 who either topped or got second position in the judiciary services tests, failed to qualify for the interview. The list includes judges from Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Orissa, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.