Group II exam row: Advocate committee submits report

HYDERABAD: The 3-member senior advocates committee on Thursday submitted a report in a sealed cover relating to Group-II test before Justice P Naveen Rao of the Hyderabad High court. The committee was appointed by the judge for verification of OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) sheets of the top 5000 meritorious candidates of the Group-II examination held earlier to fill 1032 posts.

On Feb 28 this year, Justice Naveen Rao while dealing with petitions filed separately by V Ramachandra Reddy and 14 others and P Sri Charan Das and 20 others, appointed the committee comprising three designated senior advocates of the high court who included P Sri Raghuram, R Raghunandan Rao and S Niranjan Reddy.

The judge requested them to peruse the answer (OMR) sheets of the top 5000 meritorious candidates and submit report on the veracity of allegations of usage of whitener to alter the OMR sheets, wrong bubbling and so on. On Thursday, after receiving the report from the committee, the judge posted the matter to Friday for submitting copies of the report to the counsels appearing in the case. The judge made it clear that he would take up the case hearing on March 28.

The petitioners sought court directions to disqualify the candidates who have tampered with the OMR sheet by wrong bubbling, usage of whitener and so on. The Group-II posts examination was held as per the notification issued on Dec 30, 2015 and supplementary notification on Sept 1, 2016. Besides, they urged the court to issue directions to the TSPSC to cancel the present merit list or to conduct re-examination for Group-II posts in the light of alleged tampering of OMR sheets by some candidates