New Delhi : The Supreme Court of India asked UPSC about the Logistic Arrangements made for conducting the Civil Services Preliminary Exams on October 4 in the view of the alarming spurt of COVID-19 cases with flooding in various parts of the country.
Lawyer Alakh Alok Shrivastava, the counsel for the petitioner Vasireddy Govardhana Sai Prakash and 19 other aspirants have filed the petition for the postponement of the examination. According to the plea this 7-hour offline exam, will be taken by approximately six lakh aspirants at test centers in 72 cities.
“Conducting the aforesaid examination across India at such perilous time, is nothing else but putting lives of lakhs of young students (including Petitioners herein) at utmost risk and danger of disease and death. Also, the natural calamities like flood, incessant rain, landslides etc. are likely to directly affect the life and health of the Petitioners and many similarly situated students. “Hence, the impugned Revised Calendar is utterly arbitrary, unreasonable, whimsical and patently violative of the “Right to Health” and “Right to Life” of the Petitioners herein and lakhs of similarly situated students, under Article 21,” the petition stated.
The UPSC counsel said the Civil Services exams were fixed on May 31 and it was impossible to defer them again. “This is an examination for the core services of the Government of India. Several candidates have already downloaded their e-admit card for the examination,” the UPSC lawyer said.
The bench asked the UPSC to serve the copy of its affidavit to lawyer Alakh Alok Shrivastava, the counsel for the petitioner Vasireddy Govardhana Sai Prakash and 19 other aspirants.
