The Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) has landed in a controversy as a top employee of the commission is being accused of high-level fraud.
Why is the TSPSC under fire? Reportedly, the question paper for Assistant Engineer (Civil) post, which was held on 5 March, was leaked by P Praveen Kumar (32), PA of the TSPSC Secretary, Hyderabad Police have found.
The Commission has also cancelled the examinations for Town Planning and Building Overseer and Veterinary Assistant Surgeon, which were to be held at a later date. The postponement has lead TSPSC aspirants to believe that the question papers for these two examinations were also leaked.
The Hyderabad Police have arrested nine persons who allegedly leaked the paper. The Central Zone Task Force team, along with the Begum Bazar Police, nabbed the accused gang, which included an assistant section officer in the Telangana Public Service Commission (TSPSC), the network administrator for TSPSC, and a constable from the Medchal Police of the Cyberabad Commissionerate.
The commission has terminated the accused employees.
Who are the alleged fraudsters? The main accused is P Praveen Kumar (32), a resident of Badangpet in Balapur. He was an assistant section officer at the TSPSC and according to the police, Kumar not only leaked the Group 1 paper but had also written the examination, in which he topped with 103 marks.
Kumar had teamed up with Atla Rajashekar Reddy (35), network administrator at the TSPSC, school teacher Renuka L (35) and her husband Lavdyavath Dhakya (38), Kethavath Rajeshwar (33), Kethavath Neelesh Nayak (28), and Kethavath Rajender Nayak (31), along with two candidates, Pathlavath Gopal Nayak (29) and Kethavath Srinivas (30), a police constable from Medchal.
Kiran Khare, deputy commissioner of police (Southwest Hyderabad), said that Praveen Kumar has been working at TSPSC since 2017, and Rajasekhar Reddy also joined in an outsourced position in November 2017. As a network expert, Reddy had full information about all the computers, including the IP addresses of all systems in TSPSC, and he allegedly misused his access for illegal data theft.
The police said that Kumar and Reddy stole confidential data on a pen drive, took the printouts of the question papers, and sold it to Renuka and Dhakya for Rs 10 lakh, which was paid in two installments, after the exams were conducted.
The police also seized from the accused four pen drives, seven mobile phones, three laptops, an iPad, and a desktop computer and handed them over to the forensics team for further investigation.
How have political parties reacted to the controversy? Demanding the suspension of TSPSC chairman and secretary, activists of the youth wing of Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) staged protests. The TS BJP President, Bandi Sanjay Kumar, on Tuesday, 14 March, demanded a probe by a sitting High Court judge into the TS Public Service Commission (TSPSC) question paper leak. Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) students also staged violent protests at TSPSC office and allegedly damaged property.
All about the TSPSC exams: The TSPSC had conducted the examination on 5 March for 833 vacancies of Assistant Engineer, Municipal Assistant Engineer, Technical Officer, and Junior Technical Officer in various engineering departments. A total of 55,000 candidates had written the exam.
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