RANCHI: Police resorted to lathi-charge once again on Monday to disperse students gathered near the Jharkhand Staff Service Commission (JSSC) office to protest alleged irregularities in the JSSC-CGL recruitment examination held in September this year.
Jharkhand State Students’ Union (JSSU) leader Devendra Nath Mahto, along with some other students, was also detained by the police.
Earlier on December 10, police had to use batons and fire tear gas shells to disperse the agitating students in Hazaribagh. Thousands of students took to streets demanding cancellation of the results declared by the JSSC alleging huge irregularities in it during a bandh called on December 10.
After the information was received about the students' agitation, the JSSC office was barricaded; almost every road leading to the JSSC office was blocked. Looking at the possibility of clashes between the agitating students and successful students who had reached there for documentation verification, the district administration had also implemented Section 163 of BNS (Prohibitory orders) around a 500-meter radius of the JSSC office.
Police had to use batons when the agitating students were trying to cross the barricading to reach out to the JSSC office to register their protest.
The agitating students, however, claimed they were staging a peaceful demonstration around a km away from the JSSC office, while the prohibitory orders were imposed in a 500-metre radius.
“Even though we did not break any law, police used batons on us and took away, beat our leader Devendra Nath Mahto and took him away,” said a protesting student.
Meanwhile, State BJP President and former Chief Minister Babulal Marandi strongly condemned the incident calling it a barbaric act by Jharkhand Police at the behest of the state government.
According to Marandi, the lathi-charge on students protesting against the irregularities in the JSSC-CGL examination is inhuman and condemnable. The state government is trying to crush democratic rights with lathi, he said.
“Instead of finding a solution to the peaceful protest of the students, this attempt to suppress them with the help of lathi and violence exposes the insensitivity of Chief Minister Hemant Soren towards the students and the unemployed,” said the State BJP President.
According to the students, only 82 candidates qualified in the exam held on September 21, whereas 2178 passed the exam held on September 22. They also alleged that the answers to the questions were available to many candidates even before the start of the first shift of examination on September 22.
Students have three demands; first, the JSSC-CGL exam should be cancelled immediately, secondly, transparency and fairness should be ensured in the examination process and lastly, a high-level investigation should be conducted into the irregularities in the examination and recruitment, and strict action against the culprits.
Notably, the JSSC-CGL examination had sparked controversy earlier also after the state government’s decision to disrupt the Internet services across the state for more than six hours for conducting the examinations on September 21 and 22. Internet services all over the state were restored on September 22 only after the intervention of the Jharkhand High Court.
