Another Scandal in Arunachal Pradesh Public Services Combined Competitive Examination

On the 27th of November 2017, the Arunachal Pradesh Public Services Combined Competitive Examination (APSCCE) was held. This came after a long wait of three years as the last exam had to be cancelled due to a scandal involving the leaking of question papers in 2014. The recently concluded exams are not free from other irregularities as has been reported in Arunachal Times. It has been alleged that ‘over half of the questions in the Public Administration paper had questions from www.cssforum.com.pk, which is a resource website for the CSS competitive examination and contains information about the Pakistan Civil Services.’

The Sociology portions had questions for which no correct answer was given in the options according to a candidate. There were many typographical errors and the candidate mentioned that they had left many questions unanswered simply due to the severity of the errors. It was also mentioned that there was not a single question from the Indian Sociology portion. According to Arunachal Times, the candidates found that a significant number of questions were copied from an article published on a website www.sociologydiscussion.com by Shelly Shah. According to the candidates, the website is a general discussion site and cannot be considered a reliable source. There was also about seven questions which were also copied in sequence from the BA III year, Semester V question paper of the Maulana Azad College, Aurangabad. It has also been alleged that the question papers did not come sealed, and the question booklet numbers were also manually taped to the question papers.

In an anonymous letter to the editor in Arunachal Times, it was pointed out that the sociology paper contained questions that were not from sociology, the questions ranged from philosophy to scholasticism or scholastic philosophy.

That the Commission has been dogged by a second scandal is disconcerting considering that in a state with a population of around 13.84 lakhs, 796,070 are reportedly not working. According to Arunachal Times, while the candidates are demanding that fresh exams be held, there is no consensus in their demands as some claim that the geography exam was made very easy, hence the marking for the geography paper should have a higher cutoff.

At present, the APPSC Secretary Onit Panyang said that the Commission has received a few complaints and is willing to receive others. According to him the issues would be placed before the Commission and will be examined at the earliest.