Scripts in a resort. OMRs rewritten. The floor is waiting.

Andhra’s Chief Minister did not take the Group-I file to a press meet. He took it to the Assembly. N. Chandrababu Naidu told the House on Wednesday that Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy must explain, on the floor, the lapses in the Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission’s Group-I recruitment — not in counter-attacks “based on falsehoods.”

This is not the Mega DSC fight. That is a different examination and a different demand. This is Group-I: the 2018 notification, the 2019 prelims, the 2020 mains, the 165 names that finally made the list, and a Special Investigation Team the High Court ordered because it did not trust the then government’s sworn statements.

The SIT’s public findings are ugly enough without a slogan. Answer scripts were moved out of the APPSC strong room and held at a resort — Haailand, near Mangalagiri — for about 84 days, against the Commission’s own rules. Evaluation also ran in Hyderabad. A false affidavit, Naidu said, went to the High Court. The court then asked for an SIT.

Forensic laboratories in Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bhopal, Pune, Shimla, New Delhi and Guwahati were sent papers of 736 candidates. Alterations showed up in 718 OMR sheets. Of the 165 selected, 160 had altered OMRs. Signature mismatches appeared in 89 of those files. Examiner-1, Examiner-2, scrutinising officers and camp officers — the SIT says those signatures were forged. About 48,442 duplicate OMR sheets were printed on candidates’ barcode numbers. Where the printing happened is still under inquiry.

The people who marked the papers are the part the House cannot laugh off. The Commission had identified 452 qualified subject experts. They were sidelined. About 25 school teachers and private lecturers, and 66 data entry operators, clerks, security guards and electricians, were put on evaluation. Officers traced names and numbers for about 47 of them. Two private firms, the SIT says, were known to the then APPSC secretary P.S.R. Anjaneyulu, who had been Intelligence chief in the YSRCP years. The firms were paid ₹1.14 crore and ₹1.38 crore. Some staff, the report says, raised marks after money changed hands.

Naidu’s Assembly account added the digital layer. Out of 72 evaluators, he said, 25 were unauthorised. Scripts and marks travelled on private Gmail, Google Drive and WhatsApp. Whitener appeared on OMR slips though the rules forbid it. The digital evaluation was later set aside; a fresh manual evaluation was ordered. Confidential examiner lists leaked before the camp began.

1.14 lakh people had applied. 9,679 reached the mains. 165 were chosen. A public job is a public trust. A resort is not a strong room. A plumber or a driver on a Group-I script is not a staffing shortage. It is a decision.

Naidu said he had never seen so shocking an episode in a long career, and he recalled ministers who resigned over a leaked paper or a smaller wrong. The government, he said, has placed documents before the House. Rhetoric will not brush them aside. Officers and staff who bungled will face action. The APPSC will be overhauled so this does not recur. Street chaos from a party out of power, he said, will not be accepted. Even if the government stays quiet, people will make such parties pay.

The dare is specific. Jagan should answer in the Assembly, not on a stage. The former chief minister has not, on the public record of this week, walked into that debate with a point-by-point reply to the 718 altered sheets. He has a separate fight running on the Mega DSC. That fight does not dissolve this one.

A court-ordered SIT is not a conviction. It is already more than a rumour. Altered OMRs, forged signatures, scripts in a resort, and a list of 165 that forensic science has already stained — those are the facts Naidu put on the floor. The floor is the place he says the other man must stand.