'hi-tech cheating' in Rajasthan Police entrance exam
Jaipur: The Rajasthan Police Constable Entrance Examination 2018 held recently was cancelled on Tuesday following reports of "hi-tech cheating" during the test, a senior official said.
The decision was at a high-level meeting -- chaired by Director General of Police (DGP) O.P. Galhotra -- that was attended by several senior officials including Umesh Mishra, Assistant Director General (ADG) - Special Operations Group (SOG), and ADG (Headquarters) Rajiv Sharma, among others.
The entrance examination was the first leg of the process to recruit 5,290 constables in Rajasthan.
The online examination, held first time in the state for police recruitments, had commenced on March 7. But on March 12 and 14, cases of computer hacking were reported. The police also got information about an organised racket indulging in cloning of biometric identity.
According to reports, they even provided expert proxy examination solvers to answer the papers on behalf of real candidates.
An investigation was launched and 12 persons were initially rounded up. Later, as the probe progressed, more names surfaced. Till now, 27 persons have been arrested by the SOG over the hi-tech fraud.
Around 15 out of those arrested are highly-skilled IT professionals, and have in the past facilitated similar cheating in states like Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, among others.
According to Inspector General of Police (IG) Dinesh M.N., accused Atul Vatsa is a B.Tech student who adopted similar technique during a National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) in Delhi and was arrested by the police. He also has a case registered against him in Bihar.
Similarly, his accomplice Yogendra is an MBBS student in a Rohtak college, while Sandeep Kumar, their third helping hand, is preparing for his bank exams in Delhi.
The accused said they learnt the art of making thumb-print clone on youtube. "It taught us how to use fish oil, wax and fevicol to make this clone," one of the accused said. They would apply fish oil on applicant's thumb, put it on warm and soft wax and apply a film of fevicol on reverse finger print to obtain the clone after the fevicol dried.
The expert proxies used the cloned fingerprints to appear for exams. The cloned thumb-print was smartly affixed onto the thumb of the expert proxy examination writer. He could walk into the centre and sit in the examination on behalf of the applicant.
Informed sources said offline entrance examination would most likely replace the online model.
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Mamata’s allegations on Bengal SIR baseless, exaggerated: BJP's Suvendu
Kolkata (PTI): Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, on Sunday termed Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's allegations over the ongoing SIR in the state as "baseless and exaggerated", and accused her of trying to derail the electoral roll revision exercise for political reasons.
In a post on X, Adhikari also said he has written to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, and claimed that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls was "exposing the rot in the voter lists - bogus entries, duplicates, and infiltrators that have been nurtured under the TMC's watch for years".
The BJP leader alleged that the SIR exercise was "damaging the TMC's electoral prospects", and that's why the CM was resorting to hysteria".
Banerjee had on Saturday written to the CEC, alleging that the ongoing SIR of electoral rolls has been turned into an exercise to exclude voters rather than correct records.
In her third letter to Kumar since the beginning of SIR, the chief minister accused the Election Commission of "political bias, insensitivity, and high-handedness" during the exercise.
“I would again reiterate that her claims are nothing but a desperate attempt to derail this crucial process, which is exposing the rot in our voter lists - bogus entries, duplicates and infiltrators that have been nurtured under TMC’s watch for years,” Adhikari alleged in the post.
In his letter to the CEC, dated January 10, the leader of the opposition described the chief minister’s objections as a “politically motivated attempt” to obstruct the SIR and termed the ECI’s move as "essential to ensure free, fair and transparent" elections in the state.
"The chief minister’s portrayal of this exercise as ‘unplanned, insensitive and inhuman’ is nothing short of a gross exaggeration, blown out of proportion to create public hysteria and shift focus from her government’s failures," the BJP leader alleged.
He claimed that the SIR exercise had "exposed vulnerabilities in the electoral rolls that threatened the ruling party’s electoral prospects", triggering what he termed “unfounded outbursts” from the state administration.
On December 16, the Election Commission published the draft electoral rolls after the first phase of the SIR, with the electorate dropping from 7.66 crore to 7.08 crore following the deletion of over 58 lakh names.
The second phase, which began on December 27, involves hearings of 1.67 crore electors under scrutiny, including 1.36 crore flagged for logical discrepancies and 31 lakh whose records lack mapping.
The LoP urged the Election Commission to continue the voter list revision exercise with diligence, asserting that the SIR is a routine constitutional process and should not be politicised.
