Preliminary exam for KAS posts: State Administrative Tribunal directs KPSC to refer unexamined questions to expert panel

The head office of Karnataka Public Service Commission near Vidhana Soudha in Bengaluru.
| Photo Credit: File photo

The Karnataka State Administrative Tribunal has directed the Karnataka Public Service Commission (KPSC) to refer to the expert committee to examine correctness of translation of some of the questions, which were not examined earlier by the committee, in the preliminary re-exam held on December 29, 2024, to select candidates to the 385 posts of Gazetted Probationer Group A and B.

While declining to order for fresh conduct of preliminary exam, the tribunal asked the KPSC to place the errors pointed said that some of the aspirant candidates, who have filed compilation of questions erroneously translated from English to Kannada, for examining only those questions which were not examined by the committee during earlier scrutiny.

A Bench of the tribunal comprising S.Y. Watawati (judicial member) and Amita Prasad (administrative member) issued the direction in its March 19 order while disposing of applications filed by aspirant candidates Krishna M. and others.

Interest of applicants

“The interest of the applicants will be sufficiently safeguarded if the expert committee is directed to relook into such questions. We are also conscious of the fact that there has to be finality in result and conduct of such competitive examination,” the tribunal observed.

Pointing out an instruction given in the question paper for preliminary examination clearly states that the candidates are to refer to the English version in case of confusion arising out of Kannada translation, the tribunal said that the variation in translation would not be a ground for re-examination and interference with examination already conducted.

The tribunal has also noted that the preliminary examination is an objective-type where multiple choice answers are given. There is no record in OMR sheet to prefer language option so the medium in which the candidate has opted to read the question and understand is left to the candidate.

Background of case

Initially, the preliminary examination was held on August 27, 2024, and due to complaint that there were errors in translation of 58 questions from English to Kannada, the State government had directed the KPSC to conduct re-exam. After re-exam, it was complained that there were errors in translation of 79 questions.

Following this, the KPSC had set up 12 subject expert committees to examine correctness of translation. The committee found that only translation of five questions to Kannada would impact candidates, and recommended the KPSC to grant grace marks to all the candidates for these questions. Based on this, the KPSC published result of preliminary exam on February 10, 2025, intimating that 5,746 candidates, in ratio of 1:15 among the successful candidates, are eligible to participate in the main examination.