Jharkhand: Jail to candidates, life imprisonment along with fine up to 10 crore to others for misconduct in job examinations Jharkhand Assembly passes ‘The Jharkhand Competitive Examination (Measure for Control and Prevention of Unfair Means in Recruitment) Bill, 2023’
RANCHI: To crack down on the use of unfair means and irregularities in examinations and curb the incidents of question paper ‘leaks’, ‘The Jharkhand Competitive Examination (Measure for Control and Prevention of Unfair Means in Recruitment) Bill, 2023’ passed on the fifth day of monsoon session of Jharkhand Assembly.
As per the bill, if an examinee is caught cheating or making others cheat, he could be sentenced to a period of up to one year in jail and imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh.
For second-time offenders, the jail term could go up to three years and a fine of up to Rs 10 lakh.
There is also a provision of a fine of up to Rs 2-10 crore for any kind of misconduct by coaching centres and other educational institutions in addition to imprisonment for a minimum of 10 years up to a life term.
If the charge sheet is filed against any candidate in the court, he will be barred from appearing in any examination for 2 to 5 years.
And if he is convicted by the court, the candidate will not be able to appear in the examination for 10 years.
Notably, there is a provision of sending the candidate and the agencies to jail without any preliminary investigation and registration of an FIR in case they are caught adopting unfair means during competitive examinations, which was opposed strongly by the opposition parties.
BJP and AJSU MLAs walked out in the House tearing a copy of the bill and saying that they will go to Raj Bhavan and Court against the bill.
BJP MLA Amar Kumar Bouri said it will lead to harassment for the job aspirants and give the opportunity to corrupt officials to misuse the law.
“Quantum of punishment provided in the bill is up to life imprisonment and fine up to Rs 10 crore, which needs reconsideration as it may spoil the career of a job aspirant for one mistake of recruitment agencies,” said Bauri.
It is wrong to give immunity to erring government officials taking their acts as taken in ‘good faith’, he added.
CPI (ML) legislator Vinod Singh also supported them and advised sending the bill to the select committee for reconsideration. Chief Minister Hemant Soren supported by parliamentary affairs minister Alamgir Alam, speaking in favour of the bill, said that it was in the interest of lakhs of honest students further adding that the bill has been introduced and passed by several other BJP-ruled states.
Chief Minister Hemant Soren on the other hand said, “The bill has been brought keeping in mind the future of the youth.”
On the opposition party’s announcement of going to the court, Soren retorted that all their steps are for political gains as they do not want to go public and somehow want to keep everything complicated.
Soren alleged the opposition of playing with the future of youths for the last 20 years, further adding that a lot of opportunities have been created for youths by his government and appointments are being done for thousands of posts in the state.