The Unfolding Crisis Of BPSC Examinations And Nitish Kumar’s Accountability Deficit

Paper leaks, re-examinations, lopsided selection policies, and carelessness are commonly connected with examinations conducted under the aegis of the Bihar state government.

Though there have been multiple protests against various examination bodies in the state over the years, perhaps no protest has drawn more attention from teachers, exam aspirants, students, the media, and politicians than the one being held now against the seventieth examination conducted by the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC).

The drama started in the last week of November. The protests seemed to draw inspiration from those held against the Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC).

In the latter case, the UPPSC ultimately agreed to one shift, one exam mode for the provincial civil services (PCS) exams, putting an end to normalisation, which comes into play mainly because exams are conducted in different shifts.

The main point of contention was that the normalisation formula is derived by taking into account fewer variables (mainly the number of questions attempted on average) than those actually affecting the productivity and performance of candidates.

Within a month of the UPPSC decision, the BPSC was about to conduct its own exam in multiple shifts, leaving it open to normalisation. Many of the over 4.8 lakh candidates appearing for 1,957 posts were in disagreement with it.

Students started protesting in the first week of December, less than 10 days before the exam date of 13 December.

A popular teacher, Faizal Khan, alias Khan Sir, who was recently in the local headlines for meeting Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, also supported the students. Khan Sir sat on dharna and was thereafter detained by the police.

The police also lathicharged students as they were trying to march towards the BPSC office. Many students, including Khan Sir, were hospitalised.

Incidentally, the official notification for the exam did not even mention normalisation. It was a statement by BPSC chairman Ravi S Parmar that hinted at the application of normalisation in the seventy-first examination, likely to be conducted towards the end of 2025. Candidates deduced that Parmar might employ it in the seventieth exam as well.

Even the possibility of that happening caused ripples among the candidates, as they had witnessed the horrors of normalisation in the sixty-fourth exam. At the time, the issue had reached the Patna High Court, which had ordered a review of the results, and it resulted in significant changes to the final merit list.

At present, BPSC secretary Satya Prakash Sharma and chairman Parmar termed the protest unwarranted, reiterating that the exam would be conducted in the one shift, one exam mode.

Aspirants turned up for the exam. A large attendance was seen at most of the 925 centres. But what transpired later showed the BPSC and the Nitish Kumar government in a poor light.

First, many candidates, especially those who had turned up from outside Bihar, expressed discontentment about the difficulty in reaching the exam centres. Even those who were aware of the state’s harsh terrain faced trouble.

When they somehow reached their respective centres, the level of mismanagement on display was unlike anything seen in the last three years.

For instance, candidates at many centres complained that there was a delay of 15 to 20 minutes in receiving the question paper. Such a delay makes any exam prone to paper leaks.

Many of the students in touch with this writer rued the fact that scores of their fellow candidates were already seated in rooms and solving their question papers, while they were still entering the exam centres.

For the unversed, this is a common way in which candidates who have the blessing of the powerful cheat in university-level exams in Bihar. The administration hands them the question paper before the exams officially begin.

Meanwhile, the biggest drama took place at Bapu Pariksha Bhavan, the state’s most coveted exam centre in Kumhrar, Patna.

Part of the attempt to improve public sentiment around exams, this centre was inaugurated in August 2023 by Chief Minister Kumar. Spread over 6 acres, its construction cost the exchequer Rs 281.11 crore.

Equipped with a seamless power supply via rooftop solar panels and state-of-the-art facilities, India’s biggest exam centre has the capacity to conduct exams for 16,000 to 20,000 students in one go, in both the online and offline modes.

In September this year, Khan Sir conducted one of his test series at this centre. The state government aims to open more such centres in 29 districts.

On the day of the exam, several videos from this centre went viral. In one CCTV footage, a large group of youths came and snatched question papers from those taking their exam. The miscreants are alleged to be those who were miffed about the delayed distribution of question papers.

One subset of these students claimed that the question papers given to them had broken seals, indicating prior opening. There were also those who were not given question papers at all.

“What happened is that they (BPSC) did not foresee 12,000 students coming for the examination. That caused a shortage of question papers, and then you know how there are students who just look for examinations to be cancelled so that they can get more time to prepare,” said Shubham, an exam candidate.

These allegations hinted at the possibility of a paper leak.

Protests soon rocked Patna. Desperate to stop it, Chandrashekhar Singh, the district magistrate of Patna, slapped a protesting candidate. This added further fuel to the fire.

A first information report (FIR), as well as a complaint to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), was filed against Singh.

Meanwhile, the BPSC kept denying the possibility of a leak, but acknowledged reports of violence at the centre.

At a press conference, Parmar sat down with the sealed version of the paper and dared media personnel to tear it down. “Anyone sitting here, show me how to tear it. Who said the question paper was leaked? How was the question paper leaked? If yes, tell me the exact location. Nowhere is the question paper delivered with so much security,” said Parmar.

Just after his press conference, a few youths tore the question paper down without any mechanical assistance.

Parmar is a target because his predecessor, Atul Prasad, did a tremendous job of conducting the sixty-seventh, sixty-eighth, and sixty-ninth BPSC exams.

During Prasad’s tenure, question papers arrived on time, and allegations of paper leaks were dealt with severely. Prasad cancelled the sixty-seventh preliminary exam after the paper leaked. It was later conducted strictly.

Moreover, both qualified and unqualified candidates state that the level of questions asked in the exams held during Prasad’s tenure was higher and demanded reasoning skills rather than rote learning.

That wasn't the sentiment after this year’s exam. This year’s General Studies paper demanded candidates to mainly memorise stuff. For instance, in one question, the BPSC wanted to know whether students were aware of the assembly constituency of new Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Chandra Maji. Similarly, one question was about the place where Donald Trump faced an assassination attempt.

Aspirants taking competitive exams say such questions are typically asked in banking and insurance exams. For state public services, the general view is that the questions should at least hold up, or get close, to the standards of the civil services exam conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC).

The puzzle around the exam discrepancy has one answer: the number of seats for two high-profile positions, namely Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) and Senior Deputy Collector (also referred to as Sub-Divisional Officer).

These posts are seen as high-profile and especially sought after by children of elite bureaucrats and politicians. For many of these kids, this golden opportunity can only be seized by attempting a relatively easy question paper that demands mugging up facts.

This irks the library-going, hard-working, lower-middle-class aspirants. So, even suspicions of wrongdoing fuel the fire of allegations of a paper leak.

The BPSC tried to defuse the situation by cancelling the exam conducted at Bapu Pariksha Bhavan. The commission found that of the 12,000 candidates, only 5,200 candidates had access to optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets.

Therefore, all 12,000 candidates will appear for a re-exam at 25 different centres on 4 January 2025.

Contrary to what the commission expected, the solution has worsened the crisis. This is for two reasons.

One, there was a similar problem at a centre during the time of the sixty-sixth exam. The BPSC conducted the exam again in Aurangabad for the candidates who had boycotted the regular preliminary exam. No one from that centre even passed the exam.

Allegations are that the BPSC just cleared its image while destroying careers in the process. Candidates fear a repeat of that happening.

Two, there is a fear of the resurrection of the normalisation process. Apparently, if a separate exam is conducted for 12,000 candidates, it is equivalent to two exams in two shifts.

The question papers will be different, the candidates appearing for the exam will be different from the rest of the 4.71 lakh candidates who are not taking the exam again, and tighter vigilance will be in place compared to the 13 December exam.

These variables demand an assessment of the answer sheets with a slightly different mentality. That being the case, the majority of the 12,000 students stand to gain or lose their selection chances for the mains exam, which is unfair to the rest of the candidates.

The process simply demands normalisation to standardise the test results, which goes against the demands made in the initial rounds of the protests that took place in the first week of December 2024.

The only logical solution to these issues seems to be a re-exam, which the candidates are now demanding.

However, it will be too harsh on students to attribute their protests solely to this year’s errors alone. Leaving aside the sixty-seventh, sixty-eighth, and sixty-ninth exams, the aspirants are not confident that the commission conducts exams in a free and fair manner.

So, the current student protests are the result of more than one and a half decades of frustration finally coming to the fore.

For the BPSC, these kinds of controversies are not new. Delays in issuing notifications and results due to irregularities and allegations of favouritism, among other issues, have historically undermined the commission’s work.

Other exam bodies in the state are not up to the mark either. While the Bihar School Examination Board has been in the news for fake toppers, bodies like the Bihar Staff Selection Commission (BSSC), Bihar Police Subordinate Services Commission (BPSSC), Bihar Technical Service Commission (BTSC), and the Central Selection Board of Constables (CSBC), among others, keep making headlines for exam discrepancies.

For instance, the BSSC declared the results of the 2014 Inter-Level Combined Competitive Examination in May 2022, after a staggering delay of seven and a half years.

Similarly, before the first round of BPSC protests, candidates were on the streets, protesting the process employed in the recruitment of Bihar police constables. In October this year, the BTSC also faced the wrath of frustrated students.

It is clear that this exam issue comes more from structural deficiency in the state's exam bodies. The mind is cast back to the "JP movement," named after Jayaprakash Narayan, when a generation of talented students sacrificed their careers for a political cause, but were left with nothing to do after the movement subsided, except for the few who became top politicians.

They were reduced to paper solvers and were ‘placed’ at various nodes of the education mafia industry in the state. The Jungle Raj of the 1990s further deteriorated the jobs situation in the state. Government jobs took top priority. This hunger for jobs created a money-churning industry that continues to this day. Faces have changed, but the system has not.

After 2005, Bihar got an able chief minister, but the state remained short of able bureaucrats. The few capable bureaucrats are brought into action by Kumar only in cases of extreme exigency. One K K Pathak, for example, given a free hand by Kumar, had shaken the state’s teaching department through his disciplinary enforcement of orders.

Even today, a senior officer like him inspects the minutest arrangements, such as the cleaning of washrooms and whether the correct soap has been purchased. Atul Prasad is another such name. Indian Police Service (IPS) officers Kundan Krishnan and Abhayanand are two more such examples.

People’s expectations of the system are so low that appointing disciplined and efficient bureaucrats once in a while helps Kumar keep the perception game in check.

But the end of 2024 is making it hard to manage things, especially with the state election coming up in 2025. Famous teachers like Khan Sir, Guru Rahman, and Delhi-based tutor Rohit Priyadarshi are on the ground to encourage the protesting students.

The Kumar government is resorting to the use of force against the student protesters, the videos of which are circulating on social media platforms and students’ WhatsApp groups.

As usual, the issue is now politicised to the core. Tejashwi Yadav was the first major leader to take note of the protests. For him, it is not only about taking the Kumar government head on but also highlighting how the situation has worsened after his Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) was ousted from the alliance.

Yadav claims credit for the Bihar government providing 5 lakh jobs when he was deputy chief minister. During this protest, he came from the 'Karyakarta Darshan Sah Samvad Yatra' (Worker Visit and Dialogue Yatra) to stand with the protesters. Yadav also wrote a letter to Kumar, demanding the cancellation of the exam.

Tejashwi’s father and RJD supremo Lalu Yadav appealed to all opposition leaders to take up the students’ demands.

Pappu Yadav, Tejashwi’s rival and a Lalu aide at one point, has threatened to hold a Bihar Bandh on 1 January 2025 if the exam is not cancelled. Rahul Gandhi, his senior in the Congress party, shared a video of the lathicharge and compared the beating of students to the cutting of Ekalavya’s fingers.

Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) is also standing strongly with the protesters. Manoj Bharti, JSP’s president and a former diplomat, gave his presence alongside the students and met their demand to not take JSP’s name at the protest. He stood there as a parent and wrote a letter to the Chief Secretary demanding the cancellation of the exam.

After Bharti, JSP’s financial and intellectual facilitator, Kishor, also joined the protest. He issued a "three-day ultimatum" to the Bihar government, demanding the resolution of issues concerning BPSC aspirants within three days, failing which he would lead the protests himself.

Kishor also demanded Rs 10 lakh compensation for Sonu — a student who died by suicide. Sonu was a student of Khan Sir, who described Sonu as one of the top 2 per cent of students in his batch of 20,000 students taking the test.

While all this drama is unfolding at the national and state levels and on social media, Chief Minister Kumar is busy with politics. He is on a Pragati Yatra to eliminate any doubt in the minds of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership about his chief ministerial candidature in 2025.

Kumar was forced to undertake such a yatra after Amit Shah recently expressed that a Maharashtra-like arrangement may be possible after the 2025 Bihar Assembly election.

This past week, protests related to the BPSC and the psychological tug of war between Kumar and the BJP are the two nationally relevant developments coming out of Bihar.

Voters know which of the two issues is more important. Does Kumar know?