Supreme Court issues notice to Centre and UPSC on plea filed by civil services aspirants

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Supreme Court on Thursday issued a notice to Centre and Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on a petition filed by civil services aspirants seeking postponement of exam in the wake of coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and floods in the country.

A bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and Sanjiv Khanna will now hear the matter on September 28.

The aspirants in their plea have sought the postponement of civil services 2020 examination for two to three months, citing incessant rains and flood situations in the country and the rising cases of Covid-19. The petition has been filed by 20 UPSC aspirants against the Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination, which is scheduled to be held on October 4.

The plea stated, 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. Since civil services exam is a recruitment examination, there would not be any delay or loss of any academic progress. The petition urged for the postponement of the exam stating that many aspirants are facing unimaginable hardship or unsafe health conditions. Despite alarming spurt in Covid-19 pandemic, UPSC did not increase the number of Examination Centres resulting into a situation where many candidates from rural areas will be forced to travel for around 300-400 Kilometres in order to reach to their Examination Centres and there will be high probability of such aspirants, getting affected while using public transportation for such travel