BENGALURU : The Karnataka State Police Department notification stated that the Scene of Crime Office (SoCO) applicants must write the first language SSLC Kannada language paper to qualify. The decision comes following protests from aspirants regarding the eligibility criteria of the SoCO post. The applicants complained that there was no language qualifier allowing the Karnataka domicile to apply for the post.
Compounding the problem for the applicants, the post requires that they have a forensic degree or diploma. None of the colleges in Karnataka offer these courses, resulting in disqualification of many for the post. To rectify this, the department has made it clear that a prerequisite to apply for the post is to write the Kannada Language examination at the first language level at the SSLC examinations, which will be held on April 4.
Only then, the applicant will be considered eligible. Earlier, the candidates had protested against the absence of a forensic degree or diploma course in Karnataka government schools. They had also appealed to the government to introduce such a course.
Due to this, according to Mohammed Layakath, one of the aspirants, only around 700 people wrote the exam for 206 posts. “Students who were able to get a forensic degree from private colleges or outside the state were able to write the exam, but around six lakh BSc students were unable to write the exam because Karnataka government colleges do not offer an additional one year of forensic science diploma,” he said.