LUCKNOW, Dec. 30 -- The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court has asked the Uttar Pradesh government and the Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC) to file their replies to a plea challenging the results of the PCS (Combined state/upper subordinate services) preliminary examination, 2025, and the assistant conservator of forests( ACF) preliminary examination 2025. The court provided the UP government and the UPPSC three weeks' time to submit their replies. Justice Manish Mathur passed the order recently on a petition filed by Manish Kumar and three other aspirants through their counsel KK Pal. The petitioners' counsel submitted that they took the PCS preliminary exam in 2025 under the OBC category and got marks higher than the cut-off fixed for the general category candidates. According to the Reservation Act and Migration Rules, if a candidate from a reserved category scores the same or more marks than the general cut-off, without using any special benefits, they should be placed in the general category, the petitioners' counsel said. But, the petitioners' counsel claimed that these rules were not followed and that the candidates were not allowed to appear in the main examination by the UPPSC. After hearing the petitioners' counsel, the state counsel and the counsel for UPPSC, the court directed the state government and the UPPSC to submit their counter-affidavits( replies) within three weeks. It directed to list the case on January 22, 2026 for the next hearing....