‘Prosecuting Officer’ aspirants in lurch after tricky paper-2, seek re-exam

Excelsior Correspondent

Srinagar, Feb 3: The aspirants of Prosecuting Officer (PO) Exam held by the J&K Public Service Commission (JKPSC) today sought a re-exam of paper 2 stating that paper was not only tough, and grossly disproportionate, but was also not in consonance with the notification issued.
The aggrieved candidates who appeared in the exam held on January 29, told Excelsior that to their surprise, paper-2 was tough and was totally against what the JKPC had notified. “The syllabus as well as the previous year’s papers provided by JKPSC did nothing but misled us,” the candidates said.
“The questions from two important captions of the syllabus for paper-2 regarding “Decision Making and Problem-Solving” and “Interpersonal Skills including Communication skills” were discarded.”
They further said that the questions from the caption of “Reading Comprehension” were ambiguous and the answers to them could be subjective. “Thus the answers to 20 questions depended upon the sweet will and personal understanding of the particular examiner,” the candidates said.
They said that the number of questions asked from Legal Aptitude/Reasoning was low and the larger part of the paper consisted of Current Affairs, Reasoning and Maths, which they also said, was of a high standard, not in consonance with the paper standards expected.
It is to be noted here that the candidates who appeared in the exam come from the legal fraternity and they said that their main concern is the law subjects.
The examination is bifurcated into three tiers: prelims, mains and interview and that the prelims exam consists of Paper 1, based on law subjects, and Paper 2 which is based on the CSAT pattern, in which paper 2 is qualifying and aspirants need to secure at least 33% marks.
“Since the work of Prosecuting Officer concerns with the legal field, testing the knowledge of legal aspirants based on purely hard banking level pattern is needless,” they said.
They said that putting before the legal aspirants such a hard level banking and UPSC CSAT level paper “results in a large number of disqualifications of the aspirants in Paper 2 and that too under no intimation.”
What has been done, the candidates said, is going to disturb the selection ratio of aspirants in Mains which is 1/3rd of the total number of aspirants who appeared or 25 times the total number of vacancies, whichever is less.
“At least 1500 candidates should sit in mains examination keeping in view the ratio set by PSC for qualification but it seems difficult that even 300 candidates will qualify.”
Apart from seeking a re-exam of paper 2, the aspirants said that all the candidates who appeared in paper 2 must be deemed to have qualified and the required number of students should be selected from paper 1 as per merit.
Secretary JKPSC Bashir Ahmad Dar told Excelsior that the representation of the aspirants has been received and they are examining it. “We are examining it and after the due process the decision will be taken per the law,” he said.