NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday restrained Staff Selection Commission from declaring results of 2017 Combined Graduate and Higher Secondary Level Examinations after CBI told the court that government officials were involved in leaking of question paper for the online exam which was conducted in February.

Around 1.9 lakh candidates appeared for nearly 9,372 vacancies to be filled under the SSC Tier II online exam that were held between February 17 and February 22. The examination was marred by leak of question paper which was widely circulated on social media. The government had ordered CBI probe after the candidates protested against SSC for its failure to conduct the examination fairly and demanding fresh test.

The CBI in its status report told a bench of Justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao that the question paper was leaked before scheduled time of exam and candidates used remote access software for solving their question papers by means of outside help from unknown persons. The agency also told that some of the officials of SSC were also involved in leakage of question paper and further probe was needed to track the culprit and also the candidates who benefited by adopting illegal means.

“The candidates in conspiracy with the site supervisor of respective examination centres illegally shared the screen of their PCs with unknown persons for getting undue benefit in solving the question papers for selection in job and the site supervisors in order to obtain wrongful gain allowed the PCs of the candidates remotely accessed by violating guidelines. That in furtherance of the said criminal conspiracy, the unknown officials of SSC who were supposed to supervise and monitor in order to ensure fair and smooth conduct of examination, abused their official position as public servants resulting into above illegal acts,” the agency said in its affidavit.

The bench, after going through the probe report said that entire examination process seemed to be “tainted” and in such condition the results could not be declared as many of the candidates who benefited from leakage would be able to get into government jobs.

“Upon perusal of the status reports filed by the CBI, we find that there is sufficient material on record at this stage to raise a presumption that the CGL (Combined Graduate Level) Examination 2017 and CHSL (Combined Higher Secondary Level) Examination 2017 were tainted. Hence, there shall be an injunction restraining the respondents from declaring the results of the aforesaid examinations until further orders,” the bench said.

The agency said that screenshots of some of the questions of the exam were found available on social media and the answer keys of quantitative abilities (QA) examination dated February 21 were also found on social media at 10:10 am when the exam was scheduled to be held at 10:30 am on that day.

