UPSC 2023: Delhi High Court asks CAT to expeditiously decide aspirants' plea for reducing CSAT paper cut-off

The Delhi High Court on Monday requested the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) to decide expeditiously a plea filed by Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) candidates demanding reduction of the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) paper cut-off from 33% to 23%. .A vacation bench of Justices C Hari Shankar and Manoj Jain passed the order while hearing a petition by a group of civil services aspirants challenging the CAT's refusal to pass any interim orders on their plea..At the outset, the Bench underscored that it will not stay the recruitment process and that the only case the petitioners had was that the questions were very difficult. Justice Hari Shankar said that there are a number of judgments of the Supreme Court that say that courts should not stay recruitment processes and that the balance of convenience can never be in the favour of the stay of the results. "Supreme Court judgment is there that says that courts should not look at the question papers to see if the questions are out of syllabus or difficult," the Bench said. .Appearing for the petitioners, Advocate Saket Jain argued that it was not their case that the questions were difficult, but that they were out of syllabus. Jain stated that the UPSC has acted in an arbitrary manner, affecting lakhs of students. .However, the Bench said that CAT has not dismissed their plea and that any adverse observation from the Court will affect the petitioners' case at the Tribunal. It asked Jain to argue his case before the CAT. "The learned CAT is requested to decide OA (Original Application) as expeditiously as possible in accordance with the principles of natural justice. With these observations, petition stands disposed of," the Court finally ordered. .The plea stated that this year, the UPSC has come up with a paper which not only contains questions that are out of syllabus, but also contains questions that have been asked in IIT JEE Advance and CAT examination."As per the syllabus provided by the UPSC, a candidate needs to prepare basic maths, numeracy, data interpretation of Class X level. Going against the syllabus provided, UPSC has come up with a paper which cannot be cleared by anyone who possesses only basic knowledge of mathematics (Class X level) as the difficulty level of the questions is similar to that of questions asked in CAT examination and IIT JEE examination," the plea stated. It added, "Even the questions have been asked from topics such as Permutations and Combinations (herein referred as P&C), which is a part of Class XI syllabus ( not Class X).".The petition further contended that Paper II (CSAT) conducted by the UPSC is also discriminatory against candidates from non-technical backgrounds like arts/humanities and those who cannot afford special coaching..The candidates had earlier approached the CAT with the plea. On June 9, the Tribunal refused to stay the results of the exams and issued notice to the UPSC.