APSSB needs serious reformation and honest officials

Arunachal Times: Arunachal: Wednesday, 26 February 2020.

The APSSB to be made to come under the ambit of the RTI Act, and timely reply to RTI queries

The recent APSSB job racket scam has ruthlessly shaken the confidence of hardworking, honest candidates. It has also confirmed that allegations/rumours of corruption in the previous exams conducted by the board were not baseless. Now this is an appeal to the chief minister to consider the following points to rebuild the board and regain the confidence of poor unemployed candidates:

1. Provision of answer keys, rectification of wrong answer keys (if any), cutoff mark declaration, mark declaration of shortlisted candidates, and online generation of mark statement of individual candidates.
2. Optical mark recognition (OMR) sheet must have a carbon copy and after the submission of the sheet, the carbon copy must be separated by the invigilator in the exam hall. Any blank OMR sheet (any suspicious one) to be marked ‘disqualified’ by the invigilator with no scope of remarking.
3. Must introduce ‘two part OMR sheet’ to check manipulation after the submission.
4. The APSSB to be made to come under the ambit of the RTI Act, and timely reply to RTI queries.
5. Not more than five towns/headquarters to be made exam centres to reduce time and financial cost and for better logistics. Ensure same level of strict invigilation at all centres.
6. Roll number allocation must be different from the registration sequence to check illegal mutual help.
7. In view of the strong evidence of corruption, investigate all the exams conducted by the APSSB. All selected candidates have to be tested by some standard mathematics and English grammar questions as there is conclusive indication that the merit lists were infected by blank OMR sheets. Any selected relative (if any) of servants posted in the APSSB must be scrutinized strictly.
8. Last but not least, exemplary punishment to all the culprits, so that nobody dares to sell jobs in future.

The above points, however, cannot alone solve the corruption without the support of a clean system and honest officials.

Now the SIC has a huge task to unearth the truth and save the very foundation of the APSSB.