Dear Editor,
As an onlooker of the APPSCCE mains fiasco, whose brother could not appear for his exams in Kingcup due to no fault of his own, i would like to highlights five set of candidates whose life has been affected due to the commission.
1) The aggrieved commerce candidate who did not get a fair chance at the competition because the questions were out of syllabus. In a competition where even one mark is the reason for success or failure, having 49 questions (still contestable) out of syllabus is not in accordance with the right to equality. If marks are awarded in full then it is not right for candidates of other subjects whereas if only certain percentage of mark is awarded to the commerce candidates then the commerce candidate suffers.
2) then there are those candidates who wanted postponement of examination due to the ongoing legal tussle. It is right on their part also since its ones career we are talking about. Who would want to go for job hunting after serving as a circle officer for 2-3 years if the commission lose the case.
3) Now there are those candidates who wanted to and had infact appeared for the exam. They have their reasons too ranging from family pressure to getting over the age threshold. So i will not antagonize them.
4) Then there comes others, i wont say who, who are not grouped in any of the aforementioned three groups. I heard they are called “collaterals” specifically those assigned Kingcup school as their exam center but who could not get in. There are people in social media questioning their authenticity and have derided them that the Commission didn’t stop them from writing the exam.
As a sister i think the commission did not facilitate creation of any such situation to write the exam either.
5) Lastly, there are groups of candidates who i believe are true face of humanity. These group, I am told, left their paper when the aggrieved candidates of Kingcup went to the commission for the redressal of their grievances and the commission left them stranded outside the gate. Some had their wife, while some had their brothers and sister who could not appear their exam in Kingcup school.
Now after analyzing all the group of people who have become “raita” in this mess we can say that every candidate is right in their own way and they all have and will suffer if the commission lose the legal case (well except for the commerce candidates). The commission by exercising its so called autonomy should have cancelled the Essay paper and it should have allowed the deprived candidates to appear for the General English paper and in this way they could have avoided all these mess. The essay paper could have been conducted in a later date since no leakages of paper could have been done. Now for the government representatives stating that they cannot do anything to help the deprived candidates since the commission is an autonomous body should remember that the commission is an institution, an institution run by individual, individuals who were appointed by them “the government”. Now with more exams to be conducted by the commission and election coming up the commission does not enjoy the confidence that it once commanded. The chairman and the secretary should resign on moral ground so that other candidates can trust the autonomous institution. The commission should enjoy autonomy in conducting exams but should not be given autonomy to set wrong questions, autonomy to take long period of time to conduct examination and autonomy to feed wrong answers in the OMR machine.
Now the ball is in the court of the office of the Governor, he should also not take such a long time to have an opinion and come up with a solution otherwise there wont be much difference between the way commission works and how the office of the governor works.
Yours,
L Megu
Itanagar