The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on July 31 cancelled Puja Khedkar’s provisional candidature for the Civil Services Examination (CSE) 2022. “She has also been debarred permanently from all the future Examinations/Selections of the UPSC,” the Commission said.
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The UPSC stated it neither has the mandate nor the wherewithal to check the veracity of thousands of certificates submitted by the candidates every year. “However, it is understood that scrutiny and verification of genuineness of certificates is carried out by the authorities mandate with the task,” the UPSC said in a statement.
In the backdrop of Puja Khedkar case, the UPSC has thoroughly examined the available data of more than 15,000 recommended candidates of the CSEs from the year 2009 to 2023 i.e. for 15 years with respect to the number of attempts availed by them. After this detailed exercise, barring the case of Puja Manorama Dilip Khedkar, no other candidate has been found to have availed more number of attempts than permitted under the CSE Rules.
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“In the lone case of Ms. 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. The UPSC is in the process of further strengthening the SOP to ensure that such a case does not recur in the future,” the Commission said in a statement
