TSPSC paper leak: Commission to take a call on March 5 exam today, SIT to investigate

On Tuesday, the Hyderabad police transferred the case registered at Begum Bazar police station to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) under Additional Commissioner (Crimes & SIT) A R Srinivas for a thorough investigation. On Tuesday, Governor Tamilisai Sounderarajan also sought a report from the TSPSC within 48 hours and called for stringent action against those involved.

The TSPSC had cancelled the exams for the town planning building overseer post on March 12 and for the veterinary assistant surgeon post on March 15 and 16 after suspecting that its systems had been hacked.

Reddy told reporters that the five government employees, including the two TSPSC staff, who were found involved in the scam would be terminated from service immediately. He also added that following the “unfortunate incident”, all question papers will be prepared again and that there was no change in the schedule for the Group 1 mains exam slated for June 5. Asked if other scheduled exams were also compromised, he said an audit report is awaited from the cyber security wing and the forensic sciences laboratory.

On Tuesday, job aspirants and student activists belonging to different political outfits staged protests outside the TSPSC headquarters in the city and at Osmania University over the paper leak. Accusing the commission of playing with the future of lakhs of job aspirants who have been awaiting recruitment in government departments, they sought Reddy’s resignation and the re-conduct of examinations. They have also sought a judicial probe into the scam.

Terming the TSPSC procedures as the most objective and transparent, Reddy said that the increased workload and severe staff crunch at the commission saw him trusting all employees. He added that he never imagined the involvement of insiders in the question paper leak. “For the first time, multiple jumbling of questions and their answer options was done in October last to ensure candidates sitting next to each other do not have the same questions and no malpractices are possible even using electronic gadgets,” he said.

During the investigation based on a complaint from the TSPSC on March 11, the police found that Assistant Section Officer Pulidindi Praveen Kumar and network expert (outsourced employee) Atla Rajasekhar Reddy had allegedly accessed the question papers stored in the confidential section by using passwords and credentials of other employees. They allegedly sold the question paper for the March 5 exam to a government Hindi teacher Renuka and her government employee husband, Lavdyavath Dakhya, from Mahaboobnagar, for Rs 10 lakh. Their associates scouted for prospective candidates through a police constable Kethavath Srinivas and sold the paper for Rs 13.5 lakh to Nilesh Nayak and Gopal Nayak, who took the exam, the police learnt. They also found that Kumar too gave the exam.

During the ongoing recruitment process, 30 lakh people have been enrolled after a ‘one-time registration’ on the TSPSC website, allowing them to apply for any number of posts. Reddy said as many as 26 job notifications have been issued so far and about 17,134 posts have been covered this year in seven exams, compared to recruitment done for 35,000 posts in the last seven years. This year, the target to cover 23,000 posts in 45 categories is under process.