Patna: Many of the candidates who appeared for the 70th BPSC Preliminary Exam are demonstrating outside Bihar’s capital, Patna, against the new rules proposed by BPSC for a new examination. The protest, which became violent on Friday, faced a police charge of using lathis to drive away the protesters. They have rejected the process of normalisation of marks and said they want the exam in one shift, one paper pattern. The preliminary exam is expected to be completed on the 13th of December.
The protestors assemble near the BPSC office on Bailey Road around 12 PM on Friday, levying slogans and seeking the old pattern of examination. They said that while most of the proposed normalisation process, which makes marks out of the performances of a candidate across the shifts, will consider the performances of a candidate in private examinations and uses statistical methods, the candidates sitting for the shifts would face difficulties in answering them due to difficult question papers. They argued that having only one shift would minimize disparities and win any of them, providing a standard operation for all examination takers.
According to SSP Rajeev Mishra, they tried to take out a procession towards the BPSC office, which blocked the traffic. Earlier, the police side and other administrative agencies were requested to leave the area or get off the street, but the protestors did not move from that place, so they changed their mode of protest from standing to seated protest on the street. “This is what we used on protestors after they refused to adhere to the warning and found themselves in a restricted area,” Mishra added.
Some of the aspirants were injured due to the lathi charge, but some of them, giving their statements based on this incident, said that they were beaten brutally by the SSP Mishra. “No injuries were reported. The excessive force was not used on people who were breaking the police barricades.” He further said: “The FIR is being lodged and CCTV footage is being examined so that the next course of action could be taken.”
The new examination rules have also raised concerns relating to the fairness of the process, and this has created some concern among the aspirants who have called for more transparency in the process.
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