After the Supreme Court scrapped the All India Pre- Medical Test (AIPMT)-2015 exam two days ago, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Thursday told the SC that it was not possible to meet the four-week deadline to conduct a fresh test.
A Bench of justices RK Agrawal and AM Sapre decided to take up a petition of the CBSE seeking reconsideration of the SC’s June 15 order to hold afresh the AIPMT-15 in four weeks. Mentioning the matter, Solicitor-General Ranjit Kumar told the court that it is impossible to re-conduct the exam within four weeks. He said that the board was overburdened with work of conducting seven exams simultaneously, and it needed at least three months time to conduct the exam afresh.The court also had directed the re-examination in view of large-scale cheating in the test with students getting answers in the examination hall at many places.
Earlier, while reserving its order on June 12, the court had said the examination stands vitiated even if one student is being benefited illegally. It had said that CBSE could not be held guilty as such but taking into consideration the past incidents, “CBSE ought to have been cognisant of these things”The CBSE, however, had opposed the contentions seeking cancellation of the test, saying, “6.3 lakh students cannot be made to take the exam afresh when only 44 students have been found involved in taking benefits through unfair means.”The Vacation Bench had asked Haryana Police to file a fresh report indicating the number of beneficiaries of the alleged irregularities in the pre-medical examination. It had also asked police to identify as many candidates as possible who had been benefited from the alleged leak.
The CBSE was to declare the results of AIPMT, taken by over six lakh students, on June 5 but it was stayed by the Supreme Court. The court had said, “The bigger issue is that the sanctity of the examination is under suspicion. We want to be doubly sure that there is no alternative but to order re-conduct of the exam,” adding that it did not want to take a decision “in haste”.
Following the paper leak, the CBSE had infact denied that there was a paper leak in the AIPMT conducted on May 3. The board’s controller of examination, KK Choudhary, said in a statement that “there has been no leakage of the question paper whatsoever”.The Press release went on to say that though the exam was conducted on May 3, no cases were report for another 48 hours. “No reports were received prior to the commencement of the examination, during the examination or after the examination from any quarter by the Board regarding the leakage as alleged. The first news report of this nature appeared only on May 5, after a lapse of two days”, it was stated in the press release.
The CBSE also clarified that the media reports appeared to be more of cheating than paper leak. “There have been no reports of any untoward incidents at any centre reported by any other or these sources. On careful study of the press reports, it appears that the issue pertains to the use of unfair means and attempt to cheat by certain unscrupulous elements after the commencement of the paper. The police department of the area is initiating suitable action as per law. To alley the doubts of the candidates and general public, it is again reiterated that CBSE AIPMT 2015 was conducted in a smooth and a fair manner keeping the sanctity of examination intact,” said the statement by CBSE.
According to the police, a gang had succeeded in leaking the AIPMT exam paper at Rohtak and the members had made deals with nine students and offered to help them for fees ranging between Rs15 lakh and Rs20 lakh. The police recovered mobile phones, Bluetooth devices, three undershirts, three bras along with chips from the accused.