Supreme Court says it cannot order extra UPSC attempt due to COVID, asks petitioners to approach government directly 

Disposing of a plea that sought an extra attempt in the UPSC examination in 2021, the Supreme Court asked the competent authorities to assuage the grievance of the petitioners. The petition was filed by 24 UPSC aspirants in view of the COVID-19 pandemic. The bench that disposed of the petition consisted of justices AM Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and Sanjiv Khanna.

The court had previously disposed of a similar petition. At that time, the SC bench had asked the petitioners to  “serve a copy of the petition to the counsel of the Union Public Service Commission. Now the court noted, "The issue raised in this Writ Petition is under
consideration of the appropriate authority and in light of the observations made by this Court in an order dated 30.09.2020 in Writ Petition(C) No. 1012 of 2020, needful is being done in the matter." In that scenario, it observed that it isn't appropriate for the court to "precipitate the matter further."

"If the proposed decision does not fulfil the aspirations of the petitioners, it will be open to them to challenge that part of the decision," the court noted. A large number of students had previously raised their voice against the UPSC's decision to conduct the Civil Service Examination (Preliminary) on October 4. A lot of them alleged that they will be forced to miss the exam, owing to the pandemic.