Police resorted to lathi charge on a large number of students opposing the anticipated normalization process in the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) 70th combined competitive examination, which is scheduled on December 13. Many protesters also demanded extension in exam date as lakhs of them could not fill out the forms due to problem in the BPSC server.
The protests were held when the BPSC had already released the admit card for the preliminary test and the candidates have also started downloading it for the exam, which is less than a week away. The exam for 2035 posts will be held in three phases – prelims, mains and interviews.
While the police dealt sternly with the agitating students, who assembled near the commission's office, choking the usually busy Jawahar Lal Nehru Marg, BPSC chairman Ravi S Parmar said the protests were “unwarranted and those protesting might have some other goal to achieve than cracking the test”.
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“We have made it clear that there will be one exam in one sitting. So, the question of normalization is not there. Even if the commission had decided to hold exams in multiple shifts and go in for normalisation, it would have been well within its rights. The results of many exams in the country are normalized and it is done following due process,” he added.
BPSC later also issued a notification, terming the news related to normalization “misleading”, as there was no such proposal. The students had been demanding a notification regarding the fact there would be no normalisation. “There is no mention of normalization anywhere in the advertisement for the BPSC 70th CCE, not there has been any subsequent information. The exam will be held as scheduled on December 13,” said the notification.
Maintaining that those protesting on the road a week before the exam might have some agenda, Parmar said that the serious ones were burning the midnight oil to crack the exam and the BPSC had all ready clarified everything through another notification on Thursday.
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“If the commission decides to hold exams in multiple shifts, it would issue prior information to the candidates. If the commission decides to go in for normalisation, that will also be communicated to the students well in advance. At present, that is not the case. We are going by the advertisement we had issued and there is no change in that,” he added.
The BPSC chairman said that there would be multiple sets of question papers, with the order of the questions changed, to ward off any attempt to use unfair means in the exam. “How the exam is to be conducted in the best interest of students and fair play is the prerogative of the commission,” he added.
Barely a month ago, neighboring Uttar Pradesh had also witnessed big protest by job aspirants against the UPPSC decision of conducting exams in different shifts and using a normalization system for overall evaluation.
Normalization is a scoring process used when exams are held over multiple days, as it happened in the case of teachers' recruitment test (TRE) and few other exams. As different shifts of exam have different types of questions and difficulty level may vary, normalization adjusts scores to try and create a level playing field.
However, as students protest choked Bailey road, police termed it illegal and resorted to largicharge to disperse the mob. Many protesters sustained injuries. Later, the protesters gathered at the Gardanibagh agitation site.
The protesters want that there should be clarity from the chairman of the commission that there would be no normalization process and there would be one exam on one date to give a level playing field to students.
“Why should there be same examination held on multiple days with different sets of question papers? When the country is debating one nation – one election, why cannot there be one exam in a state for one service. Protesting is not a crime. It is part of the democratic process, but here we have been beaten up for raising our genuine demands,” said a protesting student Ansari.
The agitation has also taken political overtones, with the Leader Of Opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav also taking up the cause of students and writing to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for sympathetic consideration of their demands, including extension of exam date due to problem in the BPSC server, which prevented lakhs of students from filling up their forms and examination conduct in one shift shift, the same day either same set and pattern of questions.
“The candidates have still not been officially communicated if normalization will be implemented or not. It is strange that even after filling up the form they are not aware of the process employed, as normalization is often controversial due to lack of level playing field,” he wrote.
After the lathi charge, Tejashwi condemned the police action, saying it was strange that “the students have to study, fight for their rights, face police action and then vote for the same government”.
“Now a CM who has reached his retirement age is taking recourse to such action. He is playing with the future of students. He is spending 250-crore on yatra, but should he not first hold interaction with students. This is all happening due to coaching mafia. All the changes have been done under pressure of mafia. When we were in the government, BPSC carried out recruitment for nearly five lakh posts, but everything bf was smooth. Now the sanctity of exams has been compromised,” he added.
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