ITANAGAR, Sep 2: “The mistakes made and the reasons are the same for which last year’s APPSCCE was re-conducted on 29 July this year; so why is the APPSC hesitant to do it again?” questioned Prof Otem Padung of Rajiv Gandhi University.
Prof Padung, who is a guide to the aggrieved APPSCCE aspirants demanding re-conduct of the prelims, addressed reporters at the press club here on Sunday, and said, “We have all the authentic proof, especially with regards to commerce and other social science subjects in which huge anomalies were found.”
Speaking on behalf of the aggrieved aspirants, Prof Padung said if the APPSC twice declared the results of the aspirants who had appeared for the preliminaries, “the integrity of the commission is natural to be questioned and doubted.”
He said the aggrieved students have filed a petition in the Itanagar bench of the Gauhati High Court regarding the anomalies, and informed that the last hearing would be on 5 September.
The professor requested the state government to accept the introduction of the CSAT pattern “to bring one syllabus and one examination,” saying the present syllabus “is outdated and should be upgraded from time to time.”
Commerce aspirant Kulenso Pul, who accompanied the professor, said the exam was conducted on 29 July and on the next day they approached the APPSC secretary, complaining about 64 questions which were out of the syllabus. Pul said the secretary gave assurance that an expert committee would be formed to look into the matter.
“The secretary assured to provide compensatory marks for the out-of-syllabus questions, but on 2 August the results were declared, where out of 1030 commerce candidates only three qualified for the mains,” Pul said.
“This clearly shows that the compensatory marks were not provided equally to the aspirants. On what basis and how much did the commission compensate the students? Why is the commission not providing the answer key and the cutoff mark after the declaration of the results?” he questioned.
Pul said the questions were verified by commerce HoDs of two different institutions, who found that around 78 questions were out of the syllabus, the moderation of the commerce paper was not done, and all the questions were from the mains paper, “which is violation of norms.”
“On 5 August we met the chairman. He clearly accepted that if the questions were out of syllabus, it was against norms,” Pul said.
“A person has high expectations from the commission, and stating that the errors in the question set were ‘human errors’ is a cheap reply,” philosophy aspirant Biken Nyicyor said.
“There should be a fresh conduct of the exam where all the freshers who apply should also be allowed to enroll for the same. The recruitment rule of the commission is being breached, which should be taken into consideration and checked,” Nyicyor said.
Speaking on the lower age limit, Nyicyor urged the APPSC to increase the age “as many of the students at the upper age of 18 years do not get graduated in the state.” He also sought an explanation in the matter of the ‘technical and human errors.’
The aggrieved students demanded introduction of the CSAT pattern, outsourcing paper from the UPSC, immediate re-conduct of the prelims, disclosure of the answer key and a copy of the OMR sheets, an explanation of the ‘technical errors/human errors’, and increase in the upper age limit for the examinations.
