UPSC CSE: No Interim Relief, Delhi High Court Asks CAT To Expeditiously Decide On Plea To Lower CSAT Cut-Off

The Delhi High Court asked the Central Administrative Tribunal on Wednesday to expeditiously decide the plea seeking a reduction in the cutoff from 33% to 23%.

Representational image of the Delhi High Court.

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday asked the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) to expeditiously decide on the petition that requests a decrease in the qualifying cut-off for the Part II (CSAT) examination of UPSC CSE 2023 from 33% to 23%. A vacation bench of Justice C Hari Shankar and Justice Manoj Jain declined to grant interim relief and disposed of a petition filed by a group of civil services aspirants regarding the Central Administrative Tribunal's refusal to provide interim relief. "The Central Administrative Tribunal is requested to decide OA as expeditiously as possible. Needless to say, keeping in accordance with principles of natural justice. The petition is disposed of," the court ordered, as reported by LiveLaw.

On June 9, CAT issued a notice regarding the plea that sought a reduction in the cut-off but declined to grant interim relief. The matter was subsequently scheduled for a hearing on July 6. In response, the candidates approached the High Court, expressing concern that the issue would become irrelevant by July 6, given the proceedings pending before the tribunal.

The aspirants claimed that the CSAT paper shows bias by deviating from the prescribed syllabus and including questions from topics not covered in the CSAT syllabus. The CSAT syllabus states that it will encompass the curriculum at the level of class 10. However, the paper violated this criterion. The aspirants have alleged that this year's CSAT examination included a minimum of 10 questions from a topic that belongs to the Class XI NCERT Mathematics syllabus. Furthermore, some questions were similar to those asked in previous years' examinations such as IIT JEE Advance and CAT, which assess aptitude and math skills of a higher level.

Additionally, a few students from Hindi language medium have lodged complaints regarding translation errors in the question paper. They claim that these errors caused confusion and resulted in a shortage of time during the examination.

"This year more than 25 questions were out of pattern in the CSAT question paper. Some of these questions were straight from the IIT and IIM entrance papers. The GS 2023 was arbitrary and is openly promoting flukes. UPSC is indirectly implementing the Baswan Committee Report," Manoj, a CSAT aspirant, told ABP Live.  

Aditya, another aspirant, said: "In the CSAT paper, 10 questions were on Class-11 based Permutation-Combination, while 26 questions from Number System came from CAT level. In contrast, the UPSC has kept the syllabus of its prestigious exams up to the 10th level."