Nearly 3.5 lakh students across the State heaved a sigh of relief on Thursday, as the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) postponed its preliminary examination scheduled for April 7, by a month in the wake of wide-spread protests over web servers’ crash on Tuesday.
The postponement of Sunday’s examination followed an intervention by the Maharashtra Government, which took cognizance of the continued protests by the legislators belonging to all political parties over the inconvenience caused to students and prevailed upon the MPSC to defer the examination till the second week of May.
The crash of MPSC’s web servers had resulted in the loss of all data of 3.5 lakh candidates who had registered themselves for Sunday's examination.
Following the development, the students concerned had been asked by the MPSC on Tuesday to re-register themselves for Sunday’s examination before 5 pm on Thursday. However, with time given to them being very short, a majority of the students could not re-register themselves for the examination.
Sunday’s examination – meant for filling the vacancies of 265 class-I and class-II officers — was slated to be held in 984 centres across Maharashtra.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithiviraj Chavan, who had on Wednesday said that the MPSC examination would be held as scheduled on Sunday, softened his stand, after Deputy Chief Minster Ajit Pawar and the legislators cutting across the party lines threw their weight behind the affected students and rooted for the postponement of the examination.
Following a meeting he held with leaders of various political parties, the chief minister asked the MPSC to defer Sunday’s examination keeping in view the inconvenience caused to the students concerned.
Having postponed Sunday’s examination, the MPSC has not yet finalised the new date of the deferred examination. Informed official sources said that the postponed examination would in all likelihood be held on May 12, 2013.