BHUBANESWAR: Amid growing irregularities in tests conducted for government jobs by the state government’s recruitment bodies, an independent probe has been sought into the prevailing examination system.
Highlighting many such irregularities in the last few years, members of intelligentsia including former chief secretary Bijay Kumar Patnaik and parents of candidates made the demand at a press meet here on Wednesday.
Last month, during the examination for leave training reserve (LTR) teacher positions in schools, conducted by Odisha Staff Selection Commission (OSSC), the official seals of question booklets were found broken by candidates at several examination centres. The examination was conducted in offline optical mark recognition (OMR) on March 23.
Even as several candidates raised concern and expressed doubts over chances of question leak, no corrective measure was taken by OSSC, said Rajat Kumar Mishra, who had filed a complaint in this regard at the CM’s grievance cell.
“Candidates at different examination centres had raised the issue immediately after getting the question paper. This is a gross violation of the examination guidelines. An independent agency can verify the CCTV footage of such examination centres to ascertain the veracity of the broken seal claims,” he said.
They also demanded OSEPA to make the marksheets of all qualifying candidates of the previously conducted LTR examination public and increase the upper age limit of government jobs to 40.