Surjewala says HPSC removed 10 questions from ‘revised answer key'

Indian Express

07-07-2025

Senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Randeep Singh Surjewala on Sunday alleged that the Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) has removed 10 questions from its recently released 'revised answer key' for the Assistant Professor (Geography) examination.
'Removing the questions without giving any academic basis is not only injustice to the deserving candidates, but also tarnishes the entire recruitment process,' Surjewala said.
The remarks came days after he alleged that 26 out of 100 questions from the recent HSPC exam for the post of Assistant Professor (Geography) were copied verbatim from a test conducted by the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) for the same post.
Surjewala has further demanded a judicial inquiry into the recruitment process for 2,424 assistant professor positions in the college cadre, for which 1.5 lakh candidates applied.
Reacting to this, the HPSC said the recruitment process was 'completely fair and transparent', and the results were finalised by a panel of subject experts. 'A large number of representations or objections were received from candidates on the final answer key.
These objections have been examined by a committee of subject experts, and there is no change in the final answer key uploaded by the Commission on its website,' the public announcement stated.
According to Surjewala, six of the 10 removed questions — numbers 9, 17, 20, 32, 36 and 63 — were valid, with single correct answers, while the remaining four — numbers 13, 19, 52 and 76 — had two valid answers.
'When both the answers were correct, both of them should be considered valid. If a candidate chose either of the two, it should be accepted as correct or grace marks be awarded. By removing these four (numbers 13, 19, 52 and 76) questions, the validity of the entire exam has been shelved,' he alleged.
He further pointed out that in the 'revised answer key', answers to seven questions — numbers 26, 28, 35, 37, 43, 44 and 46 — were changed to 'wrong' from what were shown as 'correct' in the initial key. 'Question number 46 was also included in the 2017 Haryana Teacher Eligibility Test (HTET) exam paper. Back then, the correct answer was considered to be 'Jean Gottman', but 'Patrick Gaddes' is marked correct in the current HPSC answer key,' Surjewala claimed.
Questioning the necessity of holding a separate exam in Haryana 'if questions were merely copied from the BPSC paper', Surjewala said candidates who took the Haryana exam had already flagged similar concerns with the Commission. The Congress said Haryana's 100-question multiple-choice exam was conducted on June 8 this year, while the BPSC on April 29.
Responding to these concerns, an HPSC official told The Indian Express: 'After candidates raised objections to several questions in the exam paper, the matter was referred to a committee of experts and the result was prepared based on their opinion.
Subsequently, candidates approached the Commission again to challenge the given answers.
In response, the Commission again constituted a panel of subject experts who looked into objections raised by the students.
Thereafter, the Commission issued a public notification on July 3 this year,' the official clarified, requesting anonymity.
On allegations of questions being copied from the BPSC exam, the HPSC official defended the Commission and said 'it is humanly impossible to verify whether a question had previously been used by any recruitment agency across India's 28 states, aside from the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC)'.
Emphasising the Commission's priority to ensure 'a fair and transparent' recruitment process, the official further said: 'The HPSC strictly adheres to the syllabus, maintains secrecy, and conducts exams without leaks.'