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The Delhi High Court has dismissed a plea which claimed that some of the questions asked in the CSAT (Civil Services Aptitude Test – UPSC CSAT) preliminary exam of the UPSC Civil Services Examination 2023 were out of syllabus. Hearing a petition filed by several unsuccessful candidates of UPSC Prelims, Justice V. A bench headed by Kameshwar Rao said what should be included in the question paper. This is the exclusive domain of academic experts and cannot be challenged before the court as the questions were extra-curricular.
The petitioners argued that though the CSAT syllabus was of Class-10 level Arithmetic or Mathematics, a large number of questions were those that assessed candidates for admission to engineering institutes and, therefore, candidates with arts and humanities background were not given equal opportunity. .
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The bench, in its order dated August 22, said, “The only ground made by the petitioners for questioning the question paper was that some of the questions were of class 11 and 12 level. Suffice it to say that the decision as to what questions need to be included in the paper and what the nature and complexity of such questions should be essentially rests with a group of academic experts. Such a decision before us cannot be challenged in judicial review merely on the ground that certain questions were extraneous to the course.”
Justice Anoop Kumar Mendiratta was also included in the bench. The bench said that this court cannot entertain an appeal against a decision of a panel of academic experts, unless the decision is clearly shown to be arbitrary, wrong or illegal, which is not the case in the present case.
The petitioners criticized the order of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) for refusing to act on their complaint. The court noted that according to the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), the examination was conducted fairly as per its rules and guidelines.