Bihar's exam transparency questioned as protests erupt ahead of polls

On December 13, 24-year-old Shubham Kumar (name changed) appeared for the Bihar Public Service Commission’s (BPSC)’s 70th Combined Competitive Examination (CCE) prelims. The BPSC conducted the exam across 912 centres, including Patna’s Bapu Pariksha Parisar, where Shubham sat in Hall 3 on the fifth floor to write the paper.

 

Two hours into the exam, Shubham said he heard sloganeering when candidates from the second and third floors protested that they hadn’t received their question papers on time. To the disappointment of several of the 400,000 aspirants who had registered, the exam was postponed at the Patna centre and a few others.

 

An invigilator at the centre, Ram Iqbal Singh, 58, suffered a cardiac arrest and later passed away. When authorities tried to rush him to a hospital, protesting students blocked the way. This led an official to slap a student, further enraging the crowd.

 

For Shubham, hailing from a lower-middle-class family in Bihar’s Aurangabad, the postponement was frustrating. In October, he had left his full-time job in Delhi to prepare for competitive exams. He appeared for a re-examination on January 4, while another retest was held on Saturday.

 

Aspirants, such as Shubham, did not expect the issue of an alleged paper leak escalating into a raging controversy with sustained protests and political blame game. With Bihar’s Assembly elections slated for October, the issue of jobs and unemployment has already become a key plank for the Opposition. 

 

A week before the BPSC prelims, which are held to fill vacancies such as sub-divisional magistrates and deputy superintendents of police, dozens of students gathered outside the BPSC office in Patna. They demanded an assurance that the exam would not follow the “normalisation” marking system. This pattern involves ‘equalising’ marks when aspirants appearing for a particular exam answer different question papers in separate shifts, and the marks of a tougher question paper in one shift are ‘normalised’ with that of another easier paper in another shift to provide a level playing field. 

 

After protests, which resulted in a police lathi charge, the BPSC assured candidates that the exam would be conducted in a single shift.

 

Apart from the invigilator’s death, the past three weeks have seen a retest, the suicide of a student, and a fast-unto-death protest by Jan Suraaj founder Prashant Kishor. Union Minister and Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) chief Chirag Paswan expressed solidarity with the protesting students.

 

Protests have since intensified, and this isn’t the first time a controversy has followed a government exam. In 2023, the Bihar Staff Selection Commission (BSSC) cancelled the first phase of its clerk-level written exam after the question paper was leaked on social media. Similarly, the BPSC had cancelled its 67th Combined Competitive Examination (prelims) in 2020 due to a leak. Perhaps the most publicised controversy was the alleged leak of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate), or NEET-UG, in Bihar in May 2024, which led to the arrests of 13 people.

 

With Bihar’s Assembly elections approaching, the political temperature is rising. Jan Suraaj’s Kishor began an indefinite fast at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan, alleging that more than half of the BPSC posts had already been “auctioned”. He said Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who had once famously promised “degree lao, naukri pao” (bring a degree, get a job), should now change his statement to “paisa lao, naukri pao” (bring money, get a job).

 

Lok Sabha MP Pappu Yadav called for a Bihar bandh on January 3, during which his supporters caused disruptions at several locations. Leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly, Tejashwi Yadav, has also voiced support for the protesting students.

 

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha said there was severe mismatch between the time of papers being given and collected. “Just think about those aspirants who were sitting for their last attempt.”

 

Ruling JDU’s National Spokesperson Rajeev Ranjan Prasad countered the allegations. “It has become a habit of the Opposition to play with the golden future of students in Bihar,” he told Business Standard, stressing that exams were conducted fairly across all 912 centres, except for one, where a re-exam had been ordered. He denied any paper leaks.

 

Anupam, the president of Yuva Halla Bol and now a Congress leader, flagged lack of transparency in the BPSC’s exam process and alleged that coaching mafias in Bihar had a strong influence over the commission.

 

He claimed that the real reason for implementing ‘normalisation’ was to benefit students who had allegedly “bought” their positions. “BPSC is simply renaming normalisation as scaling,” Anupam said.

 

Ranjan dismissed these allegations, saying: “Not even BPSC has said anything about normalisation being used. If an autonomous body like that says so, what else can our stand be?”

 

Bihar’s jobs crisis

 

Bihar’s caste-based survey of 2022 had revealed that about one-third of the state’s population still earned less than Rs 6,000 per month. Only 1.57 per cent of the population is employed in government jobs, and only 1.22 per cent in organised private sector jobs.

 

According to the PLFS survey data for 2023-24, Bihar saw a decline in unemployment rates for those aged 15 and above, narrowing the gap with national averages. For graduates, however, the rate is still above India’s 13 per cent.

 

In the 2020 Assembly elections, the RJD promised to fill vacancies or create new positions to provide 1 million government jobs if elected. The BJP, then allied with the JDU, pledged 1.9 million jobs. Meanwhile, the JDU’s Saat Nishchay 2.0 (Seven Resolves 2.0) promised 1 million jobs. RJD’s Jha said Tejaswi agreed to join hands with Nitish Kumar only after getting assurance that he would get a free hand in providing jobs.

 

In his Independence Day speech in August 2024, Nitish Kumar claimed his government had already provided 516,000 government jobs and had begun processes for the rest. He raised the target to 1.2 million government jobs by the end of his tenure. Ranjan reaffirmed this: “Our government has already given about 800,000 government jobs, and more than 3.6 million jobs, including in the private sector, will be given before the elections.”

 

BJP National Spokesperson Guru Prakash Paswan said memoranda of understanding worth more than Rs 2 trillion had been signed that would create thousands of jobs. He talked about the success of schemes like Mudra Yojna, and growth of self-help groups.

 

However, Anupam is sceptical of the numbers. “These are just vacant posts that needed to be filled faster. Both the JDU and BJP have a poor track record when it comes to filling vacancies,” he said.

 

D M Diwakar, former director of the Patna-based A N Sinha Institute of Social Studies, said the state’s economy was already struggling, and with floods hitting every year, the private sector’s participation is minimal. “All we have is the public sector,” he said, adding: “Vacancies will likely be announced before the elections to woo voters, but actual appointments may take much longer.”

 

For now, with low private sector investments, and a finite number of government jobs available, outward migration is a reality for Bihar’s youth, such as Shubham, who has returned to Delhi, and continues to prepare for other competitive exams. “There is a need to restore trust in institutions,” he said.