The Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC) has decided to ensure fairness and transparency in the examinations for the state services. The decision came after the criticism over the RO/ARO 2023 paper leak case and allegations of answer sheet manipulation in the PCS (J) Main Exam 2022. To handle such incidents the commission has come up with a new OMR retention policy.

As per the new policy, the commission will preserve a copy of the Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheet of candidates who appear for the Objective type examinations in the Combined State/Upper Subordinate Services (Preliminary) Exam or PCS exam and other state-level examinations.

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Till now, two OMRs are kept in the objective type examinations, one copy is sent to the computer agencies to get checked and prepare the result, while another copy is retained by the candidate to be used once the answer key is released or for other purposes. No such copy was kept by the commission.

However, the UPPSC secretary Ashok Kumar confirmed the new OMR retention policy by the commission. From now onwards, OMR used in objective tests for all the recruitment held under the UPPSC will have three copies.

Reportedly, the copies will be in different colors. The first copy of the OMR which is the original copy and sent for the result will be of pink color, the second copy the protected copy kept by the commission will be of green color and the third copy retained by the candidates will be blue colour. The candidates will have to submit two copies and will retain the blue copy with them.

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The decision is expected to make the recruitment procedure more transparent and to avoid baseless allegations and fake information about the exam, the official said. As per the reports, sometimes candidates make wrong charges with respect to the evaluation by filling the circles on OMR sheets, the official claimed. The retention of a third copy by the commission will help in countering such charges by the commission.