Mysterious booklets allegedly supplied to some of the aspirants of Punjab School Teachers Eligibility Test (PSTET-2) have raised further questions on the conduct of the examination on December 13, last year.
Three candidates, who had appeared in PSTET-2
have alleged that they were supplied with question booklets that were altogether different from the booklets supplied to other aspirants.
Taking up the petition filed by these three aspirants from Sangrur, Justice GS Sandhawalia of Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday seeking a reply from the PSEB on the controversy on January 15, 2016, directed the board to come up with the proposed solution that may be offered to the petitioners to redress their grievance before the declaration of the revised results of the examination. The High Court had directed PSEB to declare revised result of the PSTET-2 by January 19, 2016 in another matter.
The petitioners have contended that candidates who have appeared in the test on December 13, 2015, were supplied four different sets of Question Booklets, labeled as “(Set-1)-(Set-2) (Set-3) and (Set-4). Each booklet contained same 150 number of questions, but sequence of questions contained in all these four Question Booklets was different.
Resultantly, the Answer Keys for these four sets of Question Booklets were also different. The petitioners have alleged that although they were also supplied with the Question Booklet that had Set-1 marked on it, but later on they found that their Set-1 Booklet had all different question from the Question Booklet marked as Set-1, supplied to other students, who had appeared at the Bhai Gurdas Institute of Engineering and Technology, examination centre at Sangrur.
Alleging of being prejudiced, the petitioners have said that they have been denied level-playing field for qualifying the PSTET-2 examination. Petitioners have also produced the original copies of the mysterious Booklet of Set-1.
Petitioner’s counsel submitted that both Question Booklets were labeled as “Set-1”, all the 150 questions contained in the two Booklets were different. He also argued that petitioner Harpreet Kaur had sent an exhaustive representation to Education Secretary, Punjab, Director General School Education, Punjab and to Chairman, PSEB, Mohali on December 15, 2015 seeking redressal of her grievance and had requested for being granted with grace marks in the result, but she has not received any response from the authorities.
leveling a serious allegation on the PSEB, petitioners have said that an answer key matching with their Question Paper Booklet was uploaded initially on website of PSEB but the same was then removed from website in a clandestine manner. The PSEB was thus, trying to put a lid on the entire controversy by not dealing with grievance of petitioners.