Junior clerk exam postponed hours after paper leak

Over 9.53 lakh candidates had applied for around 1,000 vacancies of Class III Junior Clerk (Administration/Account) posts. The examination was to be conducted at 2,995 examination centres across the state. Around 7,500 policemen and around 70,000 staff were deployed for the examination.

In an official statement, the Gujarat ATS declared the names of the 15 accused as Pradeep Nayak, Ketan Barot, Bhaskar Chaudhary, Murari Kumar Paswan, Kamlesh Chaudhary, Mohammed Firoz Alam, Sarvesh Kumar, Mintu Kumar Rai, Mukesh Kumar, Prabhat Kumar, Aniket Bhatt, Raj Barot, Pranay Sharma, Hardik Sharma and Naresh Mohanty. The sixteenth accused Jit Nayak was arrested from Hyderabad and process was on to get him to Ahmedabad.

As per ATS officials, Bhaskar Chaudhary and Ketan Barot were arrested earlier also by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with another paper leak case.

According to ATS, they had got a tip-off Saturday that one Pradeep Nayak was planning to sell the question paper for GPSSB recruitment examination to candidates in collusion with Bhaskar Chaudhary and Ketan Barot.

The ATS, along with the Surat Crime Branch and Vadodara Special Operations Group (SOG), arrested the three and others from Vadodara before they could sell the paper. On verification, the question paper was found matching with the one for the recruitment examination of Junior Clerk.

As per ATS, Pradeep Nayak, a resident of Ganjam in Odisha, got the exam paper from Jit Nayak alias Shradhakar Luha who works in KL High-tech Press in Hyderabad where the paper was printed. Pradeep then contacted one of his friends, Saroj, who got him in touch with other accused from Bihar to fix a channel to sell the paper in Gujarat. They contacted Bhaskar Chaudhary, who is the managing director of Pathway Education Service and proprietor of a computer exam centre by the name Stackwise Technology in Vadodara and Ketan Barot, MD of Disha Education in Ahmedabad.

When Bhaskar and Ketan showed readiness to sell the paper, all the accused gathered at Bhaskar’s office of Stackwise Technology in Vadodara. Gujarat ATS, Surat Crime Branch and Vadodara SOG raided the place and nabbed 15 of the accused.

Sunil Joshi, Superintendent of Police (Operations), Gujarat ATS, said that most of the accused are connected with educational consultancy activities. He also said that the ATS busted an inter-state gang involved in the illegal activity and most of the prime accused were nabbed.

According to ATS, under strict instructions of the state government to ensure that no irregularity occurs in government recruitment examinations, they were specially keeping human and technical watch on Bhaskar Chaudhary, Ketan Barot and others who were earlier involved in paper leak cases.

The examination was to be held between 11 am and 12 noon on Sunday. However, early morning, the Board issued a statement informing the candidates not to go to the examination centres as the question paper was leaked.

“In the early morning of January 29, 2023, as per a tip off, police arrested a suspect and… question paper of the examination was found in that person’s possession… further investigation is conducted… in the larger interest of the candidates, the Board has postponed the competitive examination that was to be conducted on January 29, 2023 between 11 am and 12 noon. The Board expresses inconvenience caused to the candidates,” stated the official statement from GPSSB early morning.

The Board also requested candidates not to go to examination centres and that new date for examination would be declared soon. It also announced free journey for the candidates in the buses of Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation (GSRTC) by showing their call letter for the examination.

Later in the day, GPSSB chairman and IAS officer Sandeep Kumar addressed the media and said an investigation revealed involvement of an “organised gang” from outside Gujarat. He added that prior surveillance was kept on anti-social elements, as a result of which 15 persons were arrested before the crime was committed.

Kumar said, “The postponed examination will be held within next 100 days… dates will be declared by GPSSB shortly after considering dates of other competitive examinations and examinations of schools and colleges.” He added that the candidates will be able to travel free of cost in the buses of GSRTC to appear in the re-examination.

Kumar did not take any questions from media.