High Court: Fill 15,644 police constable posts in 4 weeks; probe recruitment exam paper issues

Newsmeter Network

Hyderabad: On Thursday, the Telangana High Court directed the Telangana State Level Police Recruitment Board (TSLPRB) to commence the selection process of the 15,644 vacancies of police constables in the police department within four weeks.

The Division Bench further directed the TSLPRB to refer the dispute of deletion of wrong questions in the question paper of the said examination to a second independent expert body comprising academicians from Osmania University. The body was asked to investigate the controversy of wrong questions, deletion of questions and the issue of not printing questions in Telugu.

“To instil confidence in the unemployed youth when the police recruitment examination is being doubted (question numbers 21, 57, 99 and 100) by the candidates and to resolve the entire issue, the court will refer the dispute of ‘wrong questions to be deleted’ to an independent body,” said a Division Bench comprising Justice Abhinand Kumar Shavili and Justice Namavarapu Rajeshwar Rao.

Further, the court ordered a fresh and final selection process after duly taking a second opinion from an independent body of experts as this would cause no prejudice to the TS Level Police Recruitment Board.

The court asked the TSLPRB to ensure that the members of the second independent expert body do not comprise the academicians, who were a part of the first independent expert body.

The Division Bench took into consideration the contentions raised by the standing counsel representing the TSLPRB. He informed the court that the Supreme Court in a judgement stated that it is not permissible for the high courts to go into the issues of wrong questions, deletion of questions in the recruitments and the courts have to leave this work to an expert body.

First investigation challenged

The Division Bench was adjudicating an appeal filed by the chairman of TSLPRB, challenging the orders of a single Judge, Justice P Madhavi Devi, while dealing with writ petitions filed by a group of candidates, who could not succeed in the said examination with grievances that some questions in the final examination were wrong and sought deletion of those questions. It said that the objections submitted by these candidates were not considered by the board before the declaration of results and the questions in the examination were not printed in Telugu.

On October 9, Justice P Madhavi Devi directed the TSLPRB to exclude the marks given to Questions No 122, 130 and 144 which were not translated into Telugu and also exclude the mark for Question No 57 and re-evaluate the papers and publish the provisional selection list accordingly and thereafter proceed with the selection process.

The decision of the single judge was challenged by the TSLPRB.

The TSLPRB had issued a notification on March 25, 2022, for the recruitment of 15,644 vacancies of Stipendiary Police Constable Posts Civil, Armed Reserve, SAR CPL (Men), TS Special Police (Men), TS Special Protection Group, Firemen in Telangana State Disaster Response and Fire Services Department, Warders (Male & Female) in Prisons Department.

The final examination was held on March 30, 2023, and the results were declared. On Thursday, the Division Bench dismissed the writ appeals filed by the TSLPRB.