Delhi High Court to Hear Petition Challenging Exam Irregularities in Patent Office Recruitment

A group of 23 applicants is petitioning the Delhi High Court to cancel the "Examiner for Patents and Designs" exam 2023, which was held to fill 553 "Group A" gazetted officer posts under the Union Ministry of Commerce. This is just one of the shocking examples of tainted all-India competitive examinations currently making their way into the public eye.

Justice Ravinder Dudeja's Delhi High Court vacation bench will hear a case involving recruiting irregularities on Friday. Parikshit Grewal and 22 other candidates filed the petition bringing attention to the issue. When the petition initially came for hearing on June 12, the Delhi High Court sent a notice to the government, accusing it of committing serious scandalous irregularities in the recruitment process carried out by the National Testing Agency—which is also being investigated for administering other competitive exams, like the NEET.

These Group A officers work for the Indian Patent Office, also known as the Office of Controller General of Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks (CGPDTM). The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) of the Ministry of Commerce oversees the organization.

The petitioners' attorney said, "We have requested that the position of Examiner for Patents and Designs be cancelled and reexamined due to several significant inconsistencies that we have identified in our petition". The marking criterion is the most obvious, according to Tripathi.

Petition Details

The petition claims that while the NTA acknowledged the apparent anomalies in the marking scheme, it did not correct them. The petitioners emphasised that although they acknowledged a mistake in the marking system of the questions shown on the computer screen during the Phase II mains exam, the "examination delivery agency" had been notified so that applicants would be aware of it.

They refuted the NTA's position, claiming that no testing centre informed any candidates of this "ambiguity/error." The petition questioned why the NTA did not address the mistake in the marking system of the rescheduled Phase II mains exam.

Candidate Rajiv Gaurav filed a written complaint with the Exam Controller, DPIIT, NTA Office, Okhla, Delhi, on April 22. In the complaint, he stated that he received a call on March 24 from Abhishek, the exam coordinator for the Noida centre, asking him to come to the centre two days later because they "need some clarification about the main exam."

In the complaint, Gaurav provided his roll number, UP09002241. He stated that he had already taken the main exam on January 25 at the C30/&A, Sector 62, Noida, centre. However, Gaurav said that upon arriving at the testing location on March 26, he was informed that his "primary paper is absent" and that "you must retake your exam today." In response to his grievance, he was informed that he would be considered absent if he did not retake the exam.

In his complaint, Gaurav said, "I agreed to write the main exam due to nervousness about the result." Remarkably, he was allowed to retake the exam using the "same question paper."

Second Exam

There was still more twist to the procedure. The complaint stated that when the primary results were announced on March 27, they revealed "results later" compared to the scorecards of 239 applicants, including Gaurav. When Gaurav filed the complaint, he stated that his primary outcome was on hold. Advocate Tripathi told me he was invited for an interview later on, and from what I've heard, he was one of the chosen applicants.

Furthermore, according to the petitioners, "the mains examination was held for a second time, covertly, without public notice" for 1037 candidates, unfairly benefiting a select few and utterly rendering the examination process opaque, arbitrary, and an unchecked exercise of power. The petition said that 10,474 candidates had met the main paper's requirements based on NTA data.

Following the candidates' email and in-person submissions of comments to the NTA, a notification was made public on February 6, 2024. IT consented to retake the test. But as the petition pointed out, the reexamination of the mains had already taken place the day before, on February 5. The first test was given on December 21, 2023.

Method of Evaluation

The NTA issued emails on January 25 to specific candidates who could not attend the main exam. The subject of the emails was "Conduct of the Mains examination (Paper I and Paper II), i.e., Phase II of the Post of Examiner of Patents and Design for Left-Out/ Absent Candidates," which is another instance of inconsistency that has been noted. However, the petition stipulated that no one would be granted a "second chance to re-appear in any examination" and that candidates would only be "eligible to appear in the shift(s) that was missed by them."

The petition also questioned the evaluation procedure, which referred to it as opaque because certain candidates' scorecards were marked as "qualified for interview" and others as "not qualified for interview" after the results of the two primary exams were merged. Additionally, 239 candidates were placed in the third category of "result later."

The NTA conducted the interview on April 1, 2024. According to the suit, some 239 participants received unsolicited personal calls rather than official written correspondence containing their interview call letters, raising suspicions about the purportedly shady methods used to administer the all-India competitive exam.

News source: BusinessLine