New Delhi: The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), the central agency that recruits ‘Group A’ officials in the country, said Friday it will take “criminal and disciplinary penal action” against two candidates for “fraudulently” claiming that they were rank-holders.
The development comes days after there were media reports of a “mix-up” between two candidates sharing a first name in the exam results declared last week.
According to the reports, two candidates from Madhya Pradesh — Ayasha Fatima from Dewas and Ayesha Makrani from Alirajpur — claimed to have the same 184th rank.
A statement from the UPSC said that in an internal check, it had found that Makrani and another candidate, Tushar Brijmohan from Haryana’s Rewari, had forged their documents to claim that they had been “recommended by the UPSC in the Civil Services Examination, 2022, against two Roll Numbers of genuinely recommended candidates”.
Like Makrani, Brijmohan had allegedly claimed he had the same 44th rank as another candidate sharing his first name — Tushar Kumar from Bhagalpur, Bihar.
The two candidates had not cleared their preliminary examinations held last year, according to the UPSC, and had allegedly forged documents to move to the next stage of the examination.
Speaking to ThePrint on condition of anonymity, an official with the Union Department of Personnel Training said that a police complaint will be filed against the suspects.
“Since the two candidates never cleared the exam and continue to remain private citizens of the country, they will be held accountable under Section 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating) and Section 420 (cheating and dishonestly) of the Indian Penal Code,” the official said.
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The ‘mix-up’
According to media reports earlier this week, both Fatima and Makrani claimed to have the same roll number — 7811744.
The UPSC said in its statement that Makrani had scored 22.22 marks in General Studies Paper-I and 21.09 marks in General Studies Paper-II. These, it noted, fell far short of the cut-off marks of 88.22 and 66 for the respective papers.
“Her actual Roll Number is 7805064,” the statement said. “She has not only failed to qualify in Paper-II but scored far less marks than the cut-off marks of Paper-I, which were 88.22 for unreserved category for the Preliminary Examination of the year 2022. Hence, Ms. Aysha Makrani has failed at the stage of the Preliminary Examination itself and could not move further in the next stages of the Examination,” it added.
The case of the two Tushars was similar — according to the statement, both claimed to have the same enrollment number, 1521306.
“One of them was Tushar Brijmohan of Rewari, Haryana, and the other Tushar Kumar from Bhagalpur, Bihar,” the statement said, adding that they both claimed to have obtained the 44th rank in the UPSC examination.
The UPSC statement said that Tushar Brijmohan from Rewari had failed to clear the first round of the examination and had forged documents.
Brijmohan, according to the agency, had scored “minus 22.89 marks” in General Studies Paper-I and 44.73 marks in General Studies Paper-II.
“As per the requirement of Examination Rules, he was required to score at least 66 marks in Paper-II. Thus, even Shri Tushar has failed at the stage of the Preliminary Examination itself and could not move further in the next stages of the Examination,” the statement said, adding that both Makrani and Brijmohan had acted in contravention of the provisions of the Rules of the Civil Services Examination, 2022.
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