High Court Orders TGPSC to Re-evaluate Exam Papers

The court specifically directed the TGPSC to manually re-evaluate all the answer scripts by applying the moderation method in terms of the ‘Sanjay Singh vs UP Public Service Commission’ judgment of the Supreme Court, and announce the results. Based upon such results, the commission could take steps to fill up of the 563 posts announced under Notification No. 02/2024 dated 19.02.2024.

Otherwise, the court was inclined to cancel the examinations, which would lead to the TGSPSC and state government having to re-conduct the Group-I Mains under the notification for all those who had succeeded in the Prelims. The court also set aside the time period of eight months to complete the process by the TGPSC.

Justice Rajeshwar Rao was pronouncing orders in the batch of petitions that questioned the evaluation method and pointed out several irregularities, such as, procedural and evaluation (lack of transparency, fairness, wrongdoing, arbitrariness and deviating from the rules) in the TGPSC’s conduct of the Mains.

The court made several scathing remarks against the TGPSC, saying that a constitutional body had deviated from the mandatory rules, lacked transparency, fairness and integrity in conducting the examinations. Justice Rao observed: “The acts of the TGPSC… cause injustice to the unemployed youths who have a strong hope of serving in government employment and have been waiting for the last decade.”

“Due to the commission’s negligence and inefficiency, the affected individuals are the unemployed youths who have spent a substantial amount on coaching classes, studying 10 to 12 hours a day. Some candidates had resigned their jobs for the sake of preparation for this exam,” the judge said.

The court pointed out that the TGPSC had failed in both procedural aspects and evaluation method, which was impermissible. The court said that while conducting the examinations, the commission had acted in a biased manner and had deviated from its own rules. Although, there have been two previous instances of cancellation of Group-1 examinations, the commission did not learn from its previous experience, the court noted.

The TGSPSC had issued Notification 2 of 2024 on 19.02.2024 for 563 Group-I services posts. It conducted the preliminary test on June 9, 2024, and thereafter announced the results. It conducted the Mains in October 2024 and announced the results on 30.03.2025.

Thereafter, the TGPSC called for certificate verification in the third week of April. At this juncture, some unsuccessful candidates approached the High Court and filed writ petitions questioning the conduct of the examination and the method of evaluation.

After lengthy arguments from senior counsels Rachana Reddy, M. Surender Rao, G. Vidya Sagar, K.S. Murthy and S.Rama Mohan Rao, appearing for the petitioners, the court found irregularities in procedural aspects and the method of evaluation.

The Telangana High Court directed the Telangana Public Service Commission to follow the moderation method in the Supreme Court’s ‘Sanjay Singh vs UP Public Service Commission’ judgement

The SC had said:

Moderation is inherent in the evaluation of answer scripts in any largescale examination where there are more than one examiner

“Examiner variability” in marks (due to strict or liberal approach) can be corrected by moderation.

Moderation is either by adding (for strict examiners) or deducting (for liberal examiners) a particular number of marks, with reference to principles of moderation.

For erratic or careless marking, moderation is by fresh valuation by another examiner.

Marks assigned by the examiner as moderated will be the marks finally awarded to the candidates.