he decisions taken by the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) to cancel the examination conducted on March 5th to fill various positions in the Engineering Department and to postpone the examinations that had been scheduled for March 12 (to fill posts in Town Planning wing) as well as March 15 and 16 (to fill posts in Veterinary wing), following public outrage over question paper leak and hacking of systems in the Commission’s head office by staffers in collusion with others reflect abject institutional failure.
The March 5 examination was conducted to fill 833 vacancies of assistant engineer, municipal assistant engineer, technical officer, and junior technical officer in various engineering departments. A total of 55,000 candidates had written the examination.
Their efforts have gone down the drain.Adding insult to injury, TSPSC, with umpteen loopholes in its IT security architecture, proposes to go ahead with the Group-1 Mains examination ‘as per schedule’.
After the TS government ordered probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) into the March 5 paper leak and related matters, TSPSC chairman B Janardhan Reddy trotted out an excuse that the Commission would reschedule the postponed examination after taking fool-proof measures. He gave an assurance that no such malpractices would be repeated in the future. His veiled alibi is ridiculous: “The severe staff crunch made us trust everyone. I never imagined my own people will betray me.”
For the record, the TSPSC always says it is taking no chances. Since it is within its rights to distrust students, it has introduced bubbling i.e., answers are to be bubbled (ticked) in the right circles, against options in the multiple choice. Each question has four options with each option having a circle against it. The candidate has to ‘bubble’ the circle of his choice with a blue or black ballpoint pen. As a complementary measure, OMR (optical mark recognition) sheets have been introduced so that once the candidates bubble the answers, they can be scanned for evaluation.
Likewise, for public consumption, prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC were in vogue against any assembly of persons around 500 yards at all the TSPSC examination centres.
When TSPSC could take elaborate and almost intimidating steps to keep a watch on candidates taking the examinations in various centres and sanitise around 500 yards surrounding the centres; what prevented it from keeping its own backyard clean and IT systems transparently and impeccably fool-proof right from the beginning?Police officers, military personnel, flying squads, education department officials were on duty in and around the examination centres.
But systems in the TSPSC’s head office were porous, with obviously unrestricted access to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. The glaring fact that an outsourced employee could have complete access to systems in the office and leak the papers with help from regular staffers and outsiders shows the gaping holes in the IT security architecture of TSPSC.
TSPSC, irrespective of its current staff position, is solely responsible for hiring government staff at various levels. How can it afford to be so lax in ensuring cybersecurity;and that too, in matters connected with highly confidential information such as conducting examinations?
Just arresting those caught in the act and sacking some of them is not enough. Those in charge of TSPSC’s IT security architecture and all their supervisors, including top bosses,must be held accountable. The Commission’s dismal failure to maintain the integrity of its IT applications and systems even at its head office cannot be condoned.
The TSPSC chairman’s argument that the Commission had found the paper leak and alerted the police holds no water.
The fact that the accused could access all systems and steal information from the Commission head office shows the cavalier way the top bosses treated the entire examination process. The TSPSC chairman, instead of assuaging the heartburn of 55 lakhs students who wrote the March 5th examination after having prepared for it over several months, had the gall to tell all job aspirants that they must not believe in ‘rumours’.
How can he label the contents of viral video clips and investigative media reports on the paper leak as ‘rumours’? The ease with which the paper leak happened in the case of the March 5 examination in fact draws attention to the need for a larger probe into every stage of the recruitment process that has been completed in six of the 26 notifications issued till date. Sensing the presence of more rats in the head office and elsewhere, the TSPSC has of course cancelled the examinations scheduled for March 12 as well as March 15 and 16.
It had no choice, given the way its systems had been hacked with tell-tale evidence. Fortunately, the devices seized from the accused in the March 5 paper leak were handed over to the forensics team to ascertain if they had leaked other papers. The findings of the forensics team are crucial to take a call on a larger probe.
Most importantly, the prime accused is a regular employee of the TSPSC. Acting in cahoots with at least eight others, he had downloaded the paper illegally from the TSPSC systems and sold it. Two of the accused were also beneficiaries of the leaked paper. What if they could not qualify?
The TS police, having arrested nine people for their alleged involvement in the examination paper leak case, must not rest until everyone involved and every system compromised in the conduct of all TSPSC examinations held so far is screened and isolated. All those involved, including those at the helm and morally responsible, must be brought to book.
Ultimately, the TSPSC paper leak episode is a case of fence eating the crop. That is, those holding fiduciary responsibilities have let down lakhs of candidates, most of them jobless for long and recently enthused by a ray of hope after several decades of recruitment freeze in the state government.
