UPSC cancels candidature of Puja Khedkar from IAS, debars her from all future selections
New Delhi, Jul 31: The UPSC on Wednesday said it has cancelled the provisional candidature of probationary IAS officer Puja Khedkar and debarred her from all future examinations or selections.
"The UPSC has examined the available records carefully and found her guilty of acting in contravention of the provisions of the CSE-2022 Rules," the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) said in a statement.
It said the provisional candidature of the 2023 batch probationary IAS officer for the CSE-2022 (Civil Services Examination-2022) has been "cancelled" and she has also been "debarred permanently" from all future examinations or selections conducted by the UPSC.
The commission said it was the "lone case" of Khedkar in the last 15 years where it could not detect that a candidate has exceeded the number of attempts permitted to a candidate for writing the CSE exam "primarily due to the fact that she changed not only her name but also her parents' name".
It said the UPSC was in the process of "further strengthening the SOP to ensure that such a case does not recur in the future."
The commission said a show-cause notice was issued to Puja Manorama Dilip Khedkar on July 18 for "fraudulently" availing attempts beyond the permissible limit in the examination by "faking" her identity.
She was asked to submit her response to the notice by July 25 but she requested time till August 4 to gather the necessary documents for her response, it said.
The UPSC granted her a "final opportunity" to submit her response by 3:30 pm on July 30 but she "failed to submit her explanation within the prescribed time", the commission said.
The commission said in the backdrop of the case of Khedkar, it "thoroughly examined" the data of more than 15,000 "finally recommended candidates" from the civil services exams for the last 15 years (2009-2023) with respect to the number of attempts availed by them.
After this detailed exercise, barring the case of Khedkar, no other candidate has been found to have availed more number of attempts than permitted under the CSE rules.
"In the lone case of Ms Puja Manorama Dilip Khedkar, the standard operating procedure (SOP) of the UPSC could not detect her number of attempts primarily due to the fact that she changed not only her name but also her parents' name," it said.
Taking up the issue of complaints regarding the submission of false certificates (specifically OBC and PwBD categories) are concerned, the UPSC said it only does a "preliminary" scrutiny of the certificates like whether the certificate has been issued by the competent authority, the year to which the certificate pertains, issuing date of the certificate, whether there is any overwriting on the certificate, format of the certificate etc.
"Generally, the certificate is taken as genuine, if it has been issued by the competent authority. The UPSC neither has the mandate nor the wherewithal to check the veracity of thousands of certificates submitted by the candidates every year," it said.
However, the UPSC said, it is understood that scrutiny and verification of genuineness of certificates is carried out by the authorities mandated with the task.
The UPSC has registered a police case against Khedkar for allegedly fraudulently availing attempts in the civil services examination by faking her identity to take the exam beyond the permissible attempts.
The commission conducts the civil services exam annually in three stages -- preliminary, main and interview -- to select officers for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and the Indian Police Service (IPS), among others.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
