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"3) Since the answer sheets are to be scanned (valued) with Optical Mark Scanner system, the candidates have to USE BALL POINT PEN (BLUE/BLACK) ONLY FOR MARKING THE ANSWERS. The candidates will be supplied OMR Sheet consists of two copies i.e., the Original Copy (Top Sheet) and Duplicate Copy (Bottom Sheet).

The candidate is required to use Ball Point Pen (Blue or Black) for filing the relevant blocks in the OMR Sheet including bubbling the answers. After writing the examination the candidate has to handover the original OMR sheet (Top Sheet) to the invigilator in the examination hall, if any candidate takes away the original OMR Sheet (Top Sheet) his/her candidature will be rejected. However the candidate is permitted to take away the duplicate (Bottom Sheet) OMR Sheet for his/her record. The candidates should bring Ball Point Pen (Blue/Black and smooth writing pad) to fill up relevant columns on the Answer Sheet. The candidate must ensure encoding the Register Number, Subject/Subject Code, Booklet Series, Name of the Examination Centre, Signature of the Candidate and Invigilator, etc., on the O.M.R. Answer sheet correctly, failing which the Answer sheet will be rejected and will not be valued. Use of whitener on OMR Sheet will lead to disqualification."

VRS,J&PKR,J W.A. No.1525 of 2018 & Batch

39. The second place where similar instructions are found, is the Hall-ticket. Instruction No.12 contained in the Hall-ticket reads as follows:

"12. Since the answer sheets are to be scanned (valued) with Optical Mark Scanner system, the candidates have to USE BALL POINT PEN (BLUE/BLACK) ONLY FOR MARKING THE ANSWERS. The candidates will be supplied OMR Sheet consists of two copies i.e., the Original Copy (Top Sheet) and Duplicate Copy (Bottom Sheet). The candidate is required to use Ball Point Pen (Blue or Black) for filing the relevant blocks in the OMR Sheet including bubbling the answers. After writing the examination, the candidate has to handover the original OMR sheet (Top Sheet) to the invigilator in the examination hall. If any candidate takes away the original OMR Sheet (Top Sheet), his/her candidature will be rejected. However the candidate is permitted to take away the duplicate (Bottom Sheet) OMR Sheet for his/her record. The candidates should bring Ball Point Pen (Blue/Black and smooth writing pad) to fill up relevant columns on the Answer Sheet. The candidate must ensure encoding the Register Number, Subject/Subject Code, Booklet Series, Name of the Examination Centre, Signature of the Candidate and Invigilator, etc., on the O.M.R. Answer sheet correctly, failing which the Answer sheet will be rejected and will not be valued. Use of WHITENER/BLADE OR ERASER ON OMER SHEET WILL LEAD TO INVALIDATION OF OMR ANSWER SHEET."

VRS,J&PKR,J W.A. No.1525 of 2018 & Batch

47. The Technical Committee also went into the question as to why the aforesaid types of mistakes occurred. The primary reason that caused the state of affairs, was recorded by the Technical Committee in its report as follows:

"The primary reason that caused the present state of affairs appears to be the mistaken belief that the QB No. and the OMR Sheet No. should match with each other. It is not clear as to how this misconception was created but it appears that in Paper-I examination of the Gr.II Examination, within few minutes of distributing the QBs and OMR sheets to the candidates, either due to the prompting by the invigilators or the insistence of the candidates themselves, a situation arose whereby certain administrative handling of the QBs and OMR sheets took place to ensure that the correctly matched twin documents were supplied to them. By that time, some of the candidates had already written and bubbled their Roll No.s, QB codes and Test Booklet Series i.e., AB, BC, CD or DA. It was also possible that some of the candidates might have started answering the questions in the middle part of the OMR by bubbling answers to few questions. Similarly it is equally possible that the candidate who was given first the QB and OMR also might have signed on OMR after writing the name. However due to the attempts to give matching QBs and OMRs immediately thereafter, the exchange of QBs and OMRs took place which is the ultimate cause of the present situation being inquired into. Therefore it so happened in a few test centres, in a situation of panic, neither the invigilators nor the candidates had paid attention to the clear instructions printed on QBs and OMR sheets regarding the warning not to use erasers, whiteners etc apart from not to overwrite or strike of any information on OMRs. In some cases it also appears to have happened that in spite of the exchange of OMR sheets, the Roll no.s of the first candidate apart from QB series no. were retained by the candidate to whom the said OMR was subsequently given. Such candidates continued to answer the questions in the middle part of the OMR related to performance. The committee therefore found that most of the requests/representations were made to the Commission regarding the errors pertaining to the above situation."

49. Immediately after the receipt of the above report of the Technical Committee, the Service Commission constituted a Sub- Committee to examine the feasibility of implementation of those recommendations. The Sub-Committee made recommendations for the implementation of the above report and hence the Public Service Commission went ahead with the evaluation of the answer sheets of candidates.

50. It may be seen from the recommendations of the Technical Committee that we have extracted in paragraph No.48 above that the Technical Committee segregated the errors committed by the candidates VRS,J&PKR,J W.A. No.1525 of 2018 & Batch broadly into three categories, viz., (i) the mistakes committed by candidates while filling up the general information boxes found in the first portion (Top most Part) of the OMR, (ii) the mistakes like erasures, corrections, multiple bubbling or no bubbling while answering questions found in the middle part of the OMR sheets, and (iii) the mistakes committed in the bottom most part of the OMR where the name of the candidate, the signature of the candidate and the signature of the Invigilators are to be found.