Candidates protest after denied entry to Talathi exam centre

Utpal Rokde, a resident of Umarkhed in Yavatmal district who was seen protesting outside the examination centre on Monday, said, “My preferences for exam centres were Yavatmal, Nanded and Aurangabad. But I was allotted an exam centre in Mumbai, which I got to know only two days ago when I received my hall-ticket.”

Rokade said he reached Mum-bai early morning on Monday and rushed to the exam centre in Powai. “While the paper was scheduled to start at 9am, the gates were going to close at 8.45am. It took a while to reach the centre as not only was it difficult to locate it, there was road construction work going on, on the street leding to the centre. I was almost there when the gates were closing and tried explaining my situation to those on duty but was not allowed entry.”

Seema Dhas, another candidate from Ulwe in Navi Mumbai, said, “I was devastated to see the gates close as I was just getting off the auto-rickshaw. There was no centre in Navi Mumbai in the list of exam centres. So, I had to choo-se Mumbai as one of the options.”

Another candidate said, “Many candidates were denied entry for being late by a minute or so. Everybody had taken a lot of effort to reach the exam centre…”

State coordinator for the Talathi recruitment exam Anand Rayte said, “More than 10 lakh candidates have registered for the exam, which began on August 17 and will continue till September 14. The timings are already communicated to the candidates. In today’s incident at Mumbai exam centre, the local collectorate has verified that the gates were closed at the right time.”