As if the mess with the Bihar senior secondary results were not enough of a headache—this year’s humanities topper scored sky-high marks in music, for which he had “attended a few classes”—another case of what appears to be cheating has confounded authorities. According to the Times Of India, CBI is investigating discrepancies in the India Post recruitment exams for Tamil Nadu in which a few candidates from Haryana have aced the Tamil language paper. The issue came to light after candidates from Tamil Nadu, who had appeared for the exam for recruitment of post-men and mail guards, complained to the Tamil Nadu post department. The CBI investigation has found that many candidates from different districts of Haryana appeared for the paper online from the same IP address. While how this happened is not yet clear, the fact that all of them had studied under the Haryana States Board of Education, which doesn’t make Tamil a part of the curriculum at any level, shows how little security is afforded to online examinations in the country.
Though it is easy to blame a Haryana or a Bihar for its laxity, even states like Delhi are no different. The ATS earlier this year arrested five students from Delhi for cheating in the NEET, conducted for admission into medical colleges in the country. Although many are calling for scaling back of technology for exams, given how CLAT and CAT have been conducted without problems, it doesn’t make much sense. As people are bound to find a way out, there will always be a few who will try to outsmart the system. If nothing else, there could have been one silver lining in the Haryana-Tamil Nadu case—Haryanvis demonstrating competence in Tamil would have been a leg-up for bridging the North-South cultural divide. Only if it were real, that is.
[“source-financialexpress”]
