THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: At least five visually-impaired candidates had to return disappointed without attending a Staff Selection Commission (SSC) examination here on Sunday after they were denied scribes.
“What is shocking is that this was a re-test and the first time we sat for the same exam in 2013, we had been provided assistance,” Tomy Joseph, a candidate who had come all the way from Kottayam to attend the Combined Graduate Level (Tier-1) examination at the Government Engineering College, Barton Hill, said.
“We know for sure there were five visually-impaired candidates, including myself, but we heard that two others left immediately on being told that they would not get the assistance of scribes. That makes it seven candidates,” he said.
The examination for appointments to various Central Government departments was originally held in 2013, but a re-test was declared following complaints that the question paper had been leaked. Fresh applications were not called for, but the original applicants were issued hall tickets for the re-test scheduled for Sunday.
“There was a column marked ‘VI’ (for ‘Visually Impaired’) in the application form asking whether we required scribes, and all of us had ticked ‘Yes’. We found that we were denied the facility only when we arrived at the exam centre,” Sajeev Sebastian, also hailing from Kottayam, said.
“When we protested, the invigilator and the supervising officer replied that they had not received any order regarding scribes,” he said.
The examination was based on the OMR model, and as the candidates had reported at the exam centre, the invigilating officer asked them to fill in their names and other details anyway so that they would not be marked as absent.
According to the candidates, the invigilator himself filled in the details as they could not have done it. “We sat in he examination hall for two hours doing nothing,” Tomy said.
However, SSC officials in Bangalore were unavailable for comment on the matter.