#UPSC_scam trends on Twitter, agency issues clarification about 'reserved seats'

Hyderabad: The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), on 6 August, issued a clarification following allegations of discrepancy in the number of vacancies after the agency released the results of the 2019 civil examinations on Tuesday, 4 August.

In the full list of candidates released by the UPSC on Tuesday, 829 candidates who had passed the examination were recommended for the posts of IAS, IPS, IFS, and others. However, in a separate section, the list of actual vacancies was mentioned as 927.

Twitter soon blew up with tweets from professors, journalists, Opposition party members, and a few UPSC aspirants who claimed that the commission was hiding the details of 98 seats in order to give them to candidates of the general category. The trend was grouped with #UPSC_scam

Professor Dilip Mandal, a prominent voice for those hailing from marginalised backgrounds, tweeted, “This is not a political issue. People of every ideology should support it. It is a question of the future of the youth. This is an innocent demand. Publish the list of the number of candidates and their names. Do not make appointments in secret."

It was followed by tweets from several Opposition party politicians.

The UPSC, then, issued a statement saying the candidates who were not on the list were in a “reserve list” that is kept confidential. The clarification from the UPSC read: “For recruitment to the services/post under Civil Services Examination, the Commission strictly goes by the Rules of Examination as notified by the Government of India. It is hereby clarified that as against 927 vacancies for Civil Services Examination, 2019, the Commission, in the first instance, has released the result of 829 candidates and has also maintained a Reserve List in accordance with Rule-16 (4) & (5) of Civil Services Examination Rules, 2019."