Khan Sir, Guru Rahman detained after joining Bihar civil service aspirants in protest against ‘normalisation’

Several other protesters were also detained and police resorted to lathi charge to disperse the crowd.

Normalisation is a process aimed at addressing possible variations in the difficulty of different question papers handed out at different shifts of the same exam. The commission has considered holding the exam in two shifts, and if candidates score considerably lower marks in one shift than those in the other shift, then normalisation could be done by increasing the scores of those who got the “harder” question paper.

A police official lathicharges aspirants during their protest over normalisation of the 70th BPSC examination. (PTI)

Protesting BPSC aspirants have opposed this, and the BPSC itself has maintained ambiguity on whether or not it would implement normalisation.

BPSC secretary Satya Prakash Sharma said the commission had not announced normalisation, and that examination would take place in a single shift. However, BPSC aspirants have demanded a written notification from the chairman of the commission in this regard.

During the protest, Khan Sir told reporters, “This is not Mathematics that can fetch uniform marks. The examination is of General Studies, where questions cannot be quantified and it would be absurd to adopt normalisation. This can deny many deserving students from cracking the prelims.”

Guru Rahman said, “We are strongly with the students and will keep protesting until the commission tells us in written that there will be no normalisation.”

The BPSC had first adopted normalisation in the 64th Combined (Preliminary) Competitive Examination held in 2018. After several candidates opposed it and pointed out errors in marks calculations, the Patna High Court had intervened, directing the commission to review the process. The BPSC then re-evaluated the scores and released revised results, which led to changes in the merit rankings of some candidates.