It's exam season, and all that everyone wants to talk about is results and marks. The CBI is probing an unusual complaint relating to the postal examinations in Tamil Nadu, one that will make Rubi Rai and the Bihar Board exam scam look tame in comparison.
On 11 December 2016, over 1 lakh candidates appeared in a written examination for the post of Postman and Mail Guard in Tamil Nadu Circle. It was held in five cities in the state – Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Tiruchirappalli and Tirunelveli.
The examination consisted of four papers – General Knowledge, Mathematics, English and Tamil Language. Each paper had 25 questions.
Only 138 of the 1 lakh candidates were from Haryana. On 15 March, the marks were uploaded on the postal department’s website. Since then, the department service has received several complaints of “irregularities in awarding high marks” to students from Haryana.
The postal department found that out of the 138 students from Haryana, 93 scored high marks in the range of 80-86. Forty-seven of the 138 registered their application from the same IP address. In the Tamil language paper, the Haryana students have mostly scored 24 out of 25, and they have all answered the same question wrongly and marked the same wrong option as well.
Based on the findings, the department filed a complaint with the CBI in Chennai, which has registered an FIR under charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating and criminal misconduct by a public servant.
According to the complaint, the reports filed by the departmental observers said that the “conduct of examination and condition of question paper booklets when received at the venue etc were generally satisfactory”
The Clues
The complaint by the postal department to the CBI mentions several findings which the department made on analysis after receiving numerous complaints.
Finding #1
The candidates studied under Haryana State Board of Education and there is no possibility of their securing high marks in the Tamil Language paper, in which they have the least chance of proficiency.
Finding #2
Candidates from Haryana not only secured high marks in the Tamil paper, but also in the other three papers. The total marks secured by 93 candidates from Haryana were mostly in the range of 80-86 marks.
Finding #3
Forty-seven of 138 candidates from Haryana used the same IP address from a firm called ‘Sonic Wireless Technologies, Hansi, Haryana’, though they belong to different districts of the state.
Finding #4
Thirty-six candidates from Haryana have similar email IDs along the lines of ‘nbphansiXX@gmail.com’. The complainant says that it shows that these candidates did not possess individual genuine email IDs and the same could have been created by 'Sonic Wireless Technologies’, suspected of masterminding the malpractice.
Cookie-cutter Answers
In the Tamil paper, the maximum marks obtained by the candidates of Haryana is mostly 24 out of 25 marks. All of them answered the same 24 questions correctly and same one question wrongly. The complaint further states:
This gives a strong suspicion that the source of information received by some technological devices were all from one source, as there is the least probability of having such similarity in answering by all Haryana candidates appearing in different centres.
The complaint says that on analysis of answer sheets of the candidates who scored maximum marks (84-86), it is found that their pattern of answering in the other three papers were also almost identical. They have scored the same marks by giving the same correct/wrong answers.
Only on the completion of the CBI probe will it be clear how the Haryana candidates scored high marks in Tamil language and who facilitated the malpractice, if one exists.
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