The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has debarred IAS trainee, Puja Manorama Dilip Khedkar, from all the future Examinations/Selections conducted by the Commission.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the UPSC said that Khedkar had failed to submit her response to the Show Cause Notice (SCN) issued by the Commission on 18th July 2024 for falsely availing attempts beyond the permissible limit provided for in the Examination Rules by faking her identity. Initially Khedkar was given time till 25th July 2024 which was then extended to 3:30 pm of 30th July 2024. The provisionally recommended candidate of the Civil Services Examination-2022 (CSE-2022) was found guilty by the Commission of acting in contravention of the provisions of the CSE-2022 Rules after careful examination of her available records.

Read more: UPSC files FIR against IAS trainee officer Puja Kedkar, issues Show Cause Notice

Further, the UPSC has stated that in the backdrop of the case of Puja Manorama Dilip Khedkar, it has thoroughly examined the available data of more than 15,000 finally 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 Ms. Puja Manorama Dilip Khedkar, no other candidate has been found to have availed more number of attempts than permitted under the CSE Rules, it said.

The Commission also stated that in the lone case of 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, it stated.

With regards to the complaints alleging submission of false certificates (specifically OBC & PwBD categories), the UPSC clarified that it does only a preliminary scrutiny of the certificates viz. 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, it said.

The UPSC 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 Commission stated.