Students and government job aspirants across several states are now facing increased uncertainty about competitive and university examinations, with recent incidents of alleged communication breakdowns with admit cards, distant exam centres, postponements and leaks of question papers putting a new spotlight on how exams are carried out.
Thousands of candidates who applied for the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC) Field Worker Recruitment Examination were said to fail to appear for the test on July 19. The candidates said they were not informed of the admit card and the centres where exams were held hundreds of kilometres away from their hometown.
This examination was conducted to fill 510 Field Worker posts advertised by the JSSC in 2024. 3,22,867 candidates had registered for the recruitment examination but only 86,644 came to this examination according to official statistics. The number was therefore around 27 per cent.
PTI reported that candidates said they have had difficulty in accessing information related to the exam and arranging travel on short notice. Rajesh Lohar, a resident of West Singhbhum district, received the email notification on his admit card at 2:59 pm on July 19 that he was being admitted at the examination centre gate closed at 3 pm. He was working in Jamshedpur and had been assigned a centre in Latehar, around 240 km from there.
Another candidate in the Palamu district, Mukesh Prajapati, was assigned an examination centre in Godda, almost 600 km from his home. He said he downloaded his admit card from the JSSC website on July 16, but he claimed that travelling such a long distance at short notice was extremely difficult, particularly with heavy rainfall and limited transport options.
JSSC Secretary Sudhir Gupta, however, said all examination-related information had been uploaded on the Commission's official website. He said city intimation information was made available between July 11 and July 14, and admit card details were uploaded on July 16. Gupta did not comment on the low attendance recorded during the examination.
The decision comes under a cloud of another big setback for those preparing for civil services exams in Jharkhand. The Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) postponed the Jharkhand Combined Civil Services Main (Written) Competitive Examination 2025 which had been scheduled from July 25 to July 27. “There are unavoidable circumstances,” the commission said, and postponed it until further orders.
Other examinations listed in the proposed examination calendar of the Commission were also postponed. The development triggered political reactions, with BJP MP Nishikant Dubey demanding an investigation into the matter.
Meanwhile, a separate examination controversy is affecting students in Uttarakhand regarding a leak of question papers. Uttarakhand Technical University (UTU) cancelled two BTech semester exams after an alleged leak was discovered in Shivalik College of Engineering, Dehradun.
An assistant professor was arrested for the matter and had been banned from doing examination-related work for seven years. The cancellation affected students at 12 engineering institutions. New exams will take place in the third week of August.
The recent incidents in Jharkhand and Uttarakhand have once again brought examination management under scrutiny. While in one case candidates said they had problems with communication and examination-centre allocation, others have had to cope with postponements and cancelled tests following alleged paper leaks.
For students and job aspirants who spend months preparing for competitive examinations, such disruptions can lead to significant financial, emotional and academic setbacks. The latest developments have intensified calls for more reliable communication systems, better examination-centre planning and stronger safeguards against question paper leaks.
