The Supreme Court on Monday said it wants to cancel the Staff Selection Commission’s graduate-level examination held in 2017 as it was difficult to ascertain how many candidates benefited from a question paper leak that marred the exam, reported the Hindustan Times. The top court asked the Centre for its opinion but did not pass any order quashing the exam.
The court said it was not possible to catch all the culprits who benefitted from the leak, reported The Times of India.
The Staff Selection Commission is a government organisation that conducts exams to recruit staff for various ministries and central government departments.
In February, candidates alleged that question papers of the commission’s Combined Graduate Level Examination 2017 and the Combined Senior Secondary Level Examination had been leaked on social media. Aspirants then started protesting and demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry. The Centre ordered the central agency to investigate the incident after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the matter.
On March 27, the police arrested four people and found they had allegedly hacked into the systems of the commission, leaked the question paper. These four men allegedly took remote access of candidates’ computers and helped them in the exam. In April, four more men were arrested in Delhi.
The following month, the CBI registered a First Information Report against 17 people, including 10 employees of Sify Technologies, in connection with the leak.
In August, the Supreme Court stayed the declaration of the exams’ results. The court called the entire system tainted and said it cannot permit people to benefit from the scam and get into government service.
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