For nine months, a young appointee from one of Jharkhand’s remotest districts has been reporting to a government office, drawing a government salary, and calling himself or herself, with the quiet pride that only a first government job can bring, a government servant. This week, that certainty came apart. On August 17, the Jharkhand Cabinet cancelled the 2023 JSSC-CGL examination, along with all other examinations, results, and selections linked to the private vendor TSR Data Processing Private Limited. Roughly 1932 people who had been appointed through that process- some of them had already resigned from old jobs, relocated, and begun new lives- now do not know what they are and where they are. This is not the first time the government has cracked down on a paper leak, nor is injustice with the innocent happening for the first time. It is both, at once, and that is precisely what makes it worth examining closely.
Nevertheless, the selected candidates have received temporary relief following the intervention of the Honourable High Court; their sense of job security remains under threat, as the matter is sub judice. While the government must think about those students who were affected by the paper leaks, the institutional failure of the government machinery must not punish those who got this job by studying day and night. Given that it is quite difficult to identify those who got this job through fair means of examination, the government must not shift its irresponsibility of conducting a fair examination onto the shoulders of the selected candidates.
Two crises, one week
It helps to be precise about what has actually happened, because the government’s decision has been reported, understandably, in a single breath as though the JSSC and JPSC controversies were one and the same. They are not. The JSSC-CGL examination, Jharkhand General Graduate Level Combined Competitive Examination, was notified in 2023 for 2,025 posts in Group B and Group C services. Close to 6.5 lakh candidates applied for the posts. The exam, first scheduled for January 2024, was disrupted by allegations of a leaked question paper and had to be conducted afresh in September that year. The final result came only in December 2025, two years after the process began.
By the time the Cabinet acted this week, around 1932 candidates had already been appointed, some of them serving for the better part of a year. running the government should not have the right to remain in power. government began to be affected by the politically motivated protests on a regular basis, the legislative process through democratic institutions comes into question. The 14th Jharkhand Public Service Commission examination is a separate matter entirely. Its preliminary round was held on April 19 this year for just 103 vacancies across posts such as Deputy Collector, Deputy Superintendent of Police, and Assistant Registrar. When results came on July 2, some 2,204 candidates had qualified for the Mains, a number that, set against 103 posts, tells its own story about the scale of aspiration in the state. Of these, close to 1,800 have since submitted carbon copies of their OMR sheets to the CID as part of the ongoing investigation.
Crucially, the government’s August 17 announcement addressed the 14th JPSC and two backlog examinations. Considering the rising student outrage, the government cancelled another examination: the 11th, 12th, and 13th JPSC examinations, leading to the removal of the already serving officers recruited under these examinations. While the students protesting to cancel the examinations in the wake of a massive paper leak were celebrating the government’s decision, the High Court imposed a temporary stay on the government’s decision to cancel these exams and reinstated the selected candidates for a temporary period till the matter is sub judice. Now, all the abovementioned processes are the subject of a wider inquiry the government has promised, reaching back to recruitment examinations conducted since 2014, under a committee headed by senior IAS officer Amitabh Kaushal. Now the question arises whether the government has the power to scrap the examinations and remove government employees during a judicial investigation or a matter already sub judice. If yes, then to what extent can the government morally and legally go to take decisions to justify its action of depriving the futures of the candidates selected through legal means of examinations? There is no doubt about it that students’ movements act as pressure groups for the government, with the potential to influence the government’s decision-making power.
However, if the policy-making process of the There is no doubt about it that democracy is very much about number games; however, the groups standing in smaller numbers should not be defeated by the other groups standing in larger numbers. In the context of the nature of the competitive examination system, it is generally reported that the overall success rate of major competitive examinations in India is extremely low, hovering below 1% from total registrations to final selections. If, in an examination, less than 1% of the candidates are successful, the rest, more than 99%, fail, which obviously has a huge strength to put pressure on the government to cancel the already conducted exams. It is very natural for the unsuccessful ones to desire re-exams. If the government, under pressure, makes a decision in favour of the unsuccessful candidates (the majority of applicants) with the intention of vote-bank politics, the political leaders Why should the burden of institutional failure of the government be shifted onto the shoulders of the successful candidates? Is it because they do not have the numbers to raise their voices against the government’s decision? If so, the democratic process of institution-building really comes into question.
The government must remember that competitive exams are an important process of selecting the most efficient candidates to run the civil society in a democratic state, which is built purely on trust. If it disappears, there will be anarchy in society, paving the way for chaos and violence in the society. Moreover, the government’s cancellation of the exams in response to protests led by unsuccessful candidates will create a domino effect, leading to the regular cancellation of every second exam conducted. Therefore, the ultimate sufferers of this entire process will be the students themselves. Such actions by the government in any democratic state go against Abraham Lincoln’s very idea of democracy: by the people, of the people, for the people. Since the Court has issued a temporary stay order against the government’s blanket decision to cancel the exams, the matter is now sub judice.
As the Court has directed the government to provide a solid justification for its decision, the best possible solution would be a surgical approach that selectively punishes only those involved in this illegal practice of paper leak. English Jurist Sir William Blackstone once said that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffers. Therefore, the government, rather than issuing a blanket order to cancel the entire exam, must reconsider its decision and adopt a surgical approach to nab the real culprits. Sanjay Turi, Doctoral Candidate at the Centre for West Asian Studies (CWAS), School of International Studies (SIS), Jawaharlal Nehru University, JNU, New Delhi Sumeer Ranjan, Assistant Professor, Teaches French at Amity University, Ranchi
