BHUBANESWAR: The re-examination of Combined Police Service Examination-2018 (CPSE) paper I for 282 posts of sub-inspector (SI) in Odisha Police was postponed on Saturday after glitches in the software were reported in a few centres, fuelling resentment among the candidates.
Odisha Police Recruitment Board Chairman Sudhansu Sarangi said that the test was postponed due to some software issues for which the candidates were facing difficulties in downloading the question papers.
Acknowledging the inconvenience faced by the candidates, he asserted that none will be denied the opportunity to appear for the examination. The candidates will be sent an e-mail to inform them about the rescheduled date of the examination, which has been postponed twice in last two months.
“The applications for the posts of SI were invited in 2018. It has been over four years, but we are yet to appear for the examinations for which we have worked very hard,” said a candidate outside a centre in Bhubaneswar.
Another candidate from Balasore said he had come to the Capital City in July for the examination but it was postponed due to some technical glitches. “I had to come from Balasore again to appear for the re-examination but it has been postponed again,” he added.
The candidates expressed their displeasure over the postponement and demanded that they should be allowed to appear for the examinations in their home districts. They had earlier also experienced difficulties in downloading the admit cards possibly due to bandwidth issues.
Odisha Police had earlier floated a tender to outsource the examination process and Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited had won the bid. Sources said the police are now mulling to conduct the examination through OMR sheets.
Last year, the State government granted permission to Odisha Police to recruit sub-inspectors after a gap of 27 years. The Odisha Staff Selection Commission (OSSC) had taken over the task to recruit SIs in 1994 following allegations of corruption by some recruiters in the police department. However, the government constituted a new recruitment board in Odisha Police to recruit the SIs owing to the inordinate delay by the OSSC to hold the exams for last several years.