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Police lathi-charged a large number of students protesting against the anticipated normalization process in the 70th Combined Competitive Examination of Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) to be held on December 13. Many protesters also demanded extension of the exam date as lakhs of them could do so. Could not fill the form due to problem in BPSC server.
The protest was held when BPSC had already released the admit card for the preliminary exam and candidates had also started downloading it for the exam with less than a week left. The examination for 2035 posts will be held in three phases – Prelims, Mains and Interview.
While the police dealt sternly with the agitating students who had gathered near the commission’s office, blocking the usually busy Jawaharlal Nehru Road, BPSC chairman Ravi S Parmar said the protest was “unwarranted and Those doing it may have some other goal than ending the exam”.
“We have made it clear that there will be a test in one meeting. Therefore, there is no question of generalization. Even if the Commission had decided to conduct the examination in multiple shifts and go for normalization, it would have been within its jurisdiction. The results of many examinations in the country are normalized and this is done by following the proper procedure,” he said.
The BPSC also issued a notification later, terming the news related to normalization as “misleading” as there was no such proposal. The students were demanding a notification in this regard that there would be no normalization. “There is no mention of normalization anywhere in the BPSC 70th CCE advertisement, nor is any information given thereafter. The examination will be conducted as per schedule on December 13,” the notification said.
Stating that those protesting on the road a week before the exam may have some agenda, Parmar said that serious people were setting fire at midnight to get success in the exam and the BPSC through another notification on Thursday. Everything was made clear.
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“If the Commission decides to conduct the examination in multiple shifts, it will issue prior notice to the candidates. If the Commission decides to go for normalization, the same will also be informed to the students in advance. At present it is not so. We are following the advertisement that we issued and there has been no change in it.
The BPSC Chairman said that to prevent any attempt to use unfair means in the examination, there will be multiple sets of question papers with changes in the order of questions. “It is the prerogative of the Commission to decide how the examinations are to be conducted in the best interest of the students and for fair play,” he said.
Barely a month ago, neighboring state Uttar Pradesh also witnessed major protests by job aspirants against the UPPSC’s decision to conduct the exam in different shifts and use the normalization system for overall assessment.
Normalization is a scoring process used when the examination is conducted over multiple days, as was the case with the Teacher Recruitment Test (TRE) and some other examinations. Since different shifts of the exam have different types of questions and the level of difficulty may vary, normalization adjusts the scores to try to create a level playing field.
However, as the students’ protest blocked Bailey Road, the police termed it illegal and resorted to lax charge to disperse the crowd. Many protesters were injured. Later the protesters gathered at the Gardnibagh movement site.
The protesters want it to be clear from the Commission Chairman that there will be no normalization process and there will be a single exam date to give equal opportunities to the students.
“Why should the same examination be conducted on multiple days with different sets of question papers? When there is a debate on one nation, one election in the country, then why can’t there be one examination for one service in one state? Protesting is not a crime. This is part of the democratic process, but here we were beaten up for raising our genuine demands,” said Ansari, a protesting student.
The agitation has also taken a political tone, with opposition leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav raising the issue of the students and writing a letter to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to sympathetically consider their demands, including extending the exam date due to the problem in the BPSC server. Which prevented lakhs of students from filling their forms and conducting the examination in the same set and pattern of questions either in the same shift on the same day.
“Candidates have still not been officially informed whether normalization will be implemented or not. It is strange that even after filling the form they are not aware of the process followed, as normalization is often controversial due to lack of equal opportunity,” he wrote.
After the lathicharge, Tejashwi condemned the police action, saying it was strange that “students have to study, fight for their rights, face police action and then vote for the same government”.
“Now a Chief Minister who has reached his retirement age is resorting to such action. He is playing with the future of the students. he is spending 250 crores on the trip, but shouldn’t he talk to the students first. All this is happening because of the coaching mafia. All the changes have been done under the pressure of the mafia. When we were in the government, BPSC recruited about five lakh posts, but everything was smooth. Now the integrity of the examinations has been compromised.”
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