File photo of Union Minister Chirag Paswan.
| Photo Credit: PTI
Days after the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) announced the results of the Integrated 70th BPSC-Combined (Preliminary) Competitive Examination (CCE) 2024, Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) president and Union Minister Chirag Paswan on Wednesday (January 29, 2025) demanded re-examination at all centres.
Mr. Paswan asserted that he has learnt about the “irregularities” that happened on a large scale and the demands of protesting students are genuine.
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Responding to the query of media personnel at Patna airport that protesting students have called for a ‘Maha Dharna’ on Thursday , Mr. Paswan said: “BPSC should listen to the grievances of the students who are protesting. The Commission is not ready to listen to students. I will urge the BPSC chairman to at least listen to them.”
Massive protests were carried out in the State by the BPSC students supported by political parties for weeks alleging paper leak and irregularities in the exam, which was held at 912 centres on December 13, 2024 across the State.
“The Commission should accept that there was some negligence and they should accept it. Many of my family members have taken this exam, my nephew and niece have taken this exam. They told me about the mismanagement at the exam centre. During the exam, question papers were not available for everyone. Just imagine that question paper is going for the print and after some time that same question paper is available on the social media platform. There was rigging, that’s why BPSC conducted re-examination of just once centre,” Mr. Paswan further said.
A total of 3,28,990 candidates had taken the examination, out of which 21,581 candidates had successfully cleared it.
Many candidates had boycotted the exam alleging that they did not get the question paper on time at Bapu Exam Centre (BEC) in Patna. Later, the Commission cancelled the BEC exam and conducted the exam once again on January 4 at 22 centres with 5,943 eligible candidates appearing for the re-exam.
Most candidates have been demanding that the exam held in not just one centre but all the centres should be cancelled and that the re-exam should be scheduled as they claim that irregularities took place at all centres.
Mr. Paswan asked why BPSC conducted a re-examination at just one centre. “BPSC did it because it accepted that rigging took place somewhere, something went wrong. The BPSC conducted exams at 22 different centres. It means rigging took place at 22 places. If this is the case, why any batch or student should get advantage. This is not acceptable, the advantage of even one or two marks can impact the entire future of the students. Why should one enter into this controversy? In this situation, if students demand re-examination at all the centres then what’s wrong in that. I support their [students] demand that re-examination of not just one centre but all the centres should take place,” Mr. Paswan said.
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He pointed out that the standard operating procedure (SOP) should be followed strictly if the question paper gets leaked on social media during the course of the exam. He stressed that BPSC has to take this issue seriously.
On December 29, police had used water cannons to disperse the protesting crowd over the issue of re-examination at JP roundabout near Hotel Maurya in the State capital.
A petition has also been filed in the Patna High Court in which the next hearing will take place on January 31.
Published – January 30, 2025 01:06 am IST