Twenty-eight aspirants of the prestigious Civil Services Examination have filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court challenging the Union Public Service Commission’s (UPSC) “arbitrary, exclusionary and non-transparent” practice of publishing the preliminary examination answer keys only after the completion of the year-long recruitment cycle.
The matter is scheduled to be heard by a two-judge bench of the apex court, headed by Justice PS Narasimha and AS Chandurkar on August 12, Tuesday.
The petition contended before the apex court that such delayed disclosure denies candidates any meaningful opportunity to challenge demonstrable errors in the answer key, resulting in wrongful exclusion from the Mains stage.
The plea, filed through advocates Rajesh G Inamdar and Shashwat Anand, in the top court sought immediate judicial intervention to direct the UPSC to release a provisional answer key for the 2025 Prelims held on May 25, invite objections, and publish a final key before results are declared.
As an interim relief, the petitioners have also prayed to be provisionally allowed to appear in the Civil Services (Main) Examination 2025, commencing on August 22, so that the adjudication of their grievance is not rendered infructuous.
The petition draws attention to past instances where errors in the official answer keys, disclosed nearly a year later, materially altered cut-offs — including in CSE 2024, where deletion and mis-keying of questions allegedly caused a variation of over 6% in the qualifying marks, affecting thousands.
The petition relied on the Central Administrative Tribunal’s (CAT) observations in Sahil Mathur versus UPSC, the 145th Parliamentary Standing Committee’s recommendation for early key release, and the proposals of a Supreme Court-appointed amicus in a related pending matter, all urging a transparent, time-bound system similar to those followed by NTA, SSC, and various State PSCs.
