As the Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) is learnt to have decided to conduct the offline examination of the main examination of the combined civil services agitating students have accused the JPSC of putting their lives at risk.
As per the schedules announced, the main examination will be held from January 28 till January 30. A total of 14 examination centers across Jharkhand have been selected and students were asked to download the admit card from the website of the JPSC.
Like other states, Jharkhand is also facing the third wave of the Covid 19, and the government has imposed the lockdown which will stay effective till January 31. All schools and colleges have been closed and any gathering at public places has been restricted under the disaster management act.
Notably, on January 3 when chief minister Hemant Soren had chaired the meeting of disaster management to review the situation the direction was clear that all offline examinations in Jharkhand will remain suspended. But the JPSC has not issued any statement on whether or not the examination will be postponed.
According to the direction of the government, all public places like parks, fitness centers, stadiums, schools, and colleges will remain closed.
Even if the JPSC gets special permission from the government and makes special arrangements for the examination, it hardly minimizes risk factors. It will be difficult to ascertain whether or not an aspirant is affected by the Covid 19.
The JPSC issued a notification to hold a combined civil service examination comprising seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth JPSC against 252 seats. A total of 4293 students were declared successful. However, students raised questions over the examination process and the result as they alleged corruption in declaring preliminary results.
“The JPSC wants to take the examination at any cost because the Commission knows that the recruitment process has become controversial due to the corruption and sooner or later the court will scrap the recruitment. It just wants to create legal complexities for the later stage,” said Manoj Yadav who leads the agitation.
He said that there is no guarantee that offline examinations will be safe. “Who will ensure that students will not be affected by the Covid-19 and what if a student affected by the virus turn-up for the examination,” said another student.
The Jharkhand High Court is also hearing the matter related to the mains examination of the combined civil services examination The petitioner Shekhar Suman had objected to the result of the preliminary examination on various technical grounds including wrong answers and others. The bench of Chief Justice Dr. Ravi Ranjan has already directed the concerned single bench to conclude the hearing and pass the order before January 28