High court scraps Haryana Civil Service judicial exam

The Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday scrapped the Haryana Civil Service (judicial) examination conducted on July 16 after an internal probe found that the question paper had been leaked.

The decision was taken on Thursday, a day after a full bench took up the report of the high court committee that conducted the probe and recommended registration of first information report (FIR) against two candidates and the registrar (recruitment), high court, Balwinder Sharma.

The probe found that even though Sharma denied knowing one of the candidates, Sunita, a total of 760 calls and SMSes were exchanged between them during the past one year. The second candidate named in the probe report is Sushila. Both Sunita and Sushila had topped in their respective streams.

The committee also recommended that Sharma be transferred forthwith from the post and a parallel probe be conducted by the high court against Sharma.

Haryana Public Service Commission had put out an advertisement for recruitment of 109 HCS officers (judicial) on March 20 this year. The matter had reached the court in August on the petition of Suman, a Pinjore resident, who had sought a probe by the Central bureau of Investigation (CBI) alleging that the paper leak was a “package deal” offered by those involved to some candidates. A full bench of the high court is to again take up the matter on Friday.