Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Hemant Soren was turning 51 on August 10, and Ranchi gifted the chief minister of Jharkhand the worst institutional crisis of his second term. Comeuppance, the agitating students would say, as they went ahead with their threatened gherao of the legislative assembly—creating a visual landscape of protest that echoed Jantar Mantar barely 20 days earlier.
These were times when Gen Z would not take no for an answer, especially not in the face of teargas, water cannons and lathis. By the evening of August 10, the state CID had arrested L. Khiangte, former chairman of the Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC). A big wicket. Even before this, the state was saying it had met “98 per cent” of the demands put forward by the students. But it was still prevaricating on one: a CBI probe.
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The JPSC itself had suffered an institutional collapse unprecedented in its history. On August 9, governor Santosh Kumar Gangwar accepted the resignations of the commission’s three remaining members—Ajeeta Bhattacharya, Anima Hansda and Jamal Ahmad—barely weeks after Khiangte had stepped down as chairman on July 22 amidst mounting allegations of irregularities in the 14th Combined Civil Services Examination. The constitutional body was, in effect, left without its full leadership at the very moment its credibility was under the most intense scrutiny.
On August 11, Soren announced in the assembly that the contentious 14th JPSC Civil Services Examination stood cancelled. The chief minister also declared that all examinations conducted by the private agency TSR Data Processing Private Limited (TDPL) would be investigated. The CID had already arrested multiple individuals, including an accountant from the agency who allegedly fraudulently cleared the 14th JPSC preliminary test himself.
Khiangte, a Mizoram-born, Jharkhand-cadre IAS officer, had retired as the state’s chief secretary before being named to head the JPSC in early 2025. His remit: to oversee the state’s rigorous competitive examinations, especially the high-stakes 14th Civil Services Examination. The previous exam cycle, in 2024, had been a messy affair: questions over question-paper handling and answers, protests, litigation and delayed results. The next one had to be pristine. Instead, it proved even more calamitous.
April 19, exam day, was deemed too rushed—students had barely 40 days, roughly one-third of the usual preparation window, to master a vast syllabus. Then, on the night of July 2, came the results: 2,204 candidates had passed, with just 17 days to prepare for the Mains examination for 103 posts.
Within days, aspirants noticed odd details. The JPSC had withheld category-wise cut-offs, so no one knew what the qualifying marks were. Some sheets did not carry the signatures of every JPSC member. Then a leaked OMR answer sheet of a qualifying candidate went viral: it showed only 48 of 200 questions answered, yet the candidate had cleared the examination.
All hell broke loose. On July 21, the CID arrested eight people, including a deputy examination controller and personnel of the Lucknow-based TDPL, to which critical backend operations had been outsourced—from OMR-sheet evaluation to result compilation. The next day, Khiangte stepped down, and spent the following fortnight answering tough questions himself.
It turned out that TDPL had previously been blacklisted, yet was awarded the work without a competitive tender. Investigators allege that digital records were altered at the agency’s end to inflate the scores of favoured candidates. A TDPL employee, Rakshak Singh, allegedly tampered with his own answer sheet to qualify himself. He was among five people arrested on August 5.
The allegation was particularly explosive: an employee of the very agency entrusted with sensitive examination operations had allegedly manipulated his own OMR and cleared the examination. The case had consequently moved beyond questions of administrative negligence into allegations of an organised conspiracy involving examination officials, the outsourced agency and candidates.
The CID has since expanded its investigation, including scrutiny of the carbon copies of OMR sheets submitted by successful candidates in an effort to establish the extent of the alleged manipulation.
On August 9, the Soren regime scrapped the 14th prelims as well as the 2023 and 2025 backlog examinations due in early August. This followed a six-hour marathon meeting between a ministerial committee and student representatives. The panel agreed to an Enforcement Directorate (ED) probe, a fast-track court and an expert committee on recruitment reforms.
But the students wanted more: a CBI probe, particularly into the wider recruitment system and examinations they believe have been compromised.
On August 11, they were still on the warpath. Student leader Devendra Nath Mahto remained on the hunger strike he began on August 2, shifting to a liquid fast after a video call from education activist Sonam Wangchuk, who urged him not to endanger his life. On August 10, Mahto insisted on being carried on an ambulance to the assembly march. After his condition deteriorated and his vitals collapsed, he was evacuated to hospital. Two fellow aspirants have since embarked on a fast.
But politics is never too far away. As an Opposition-ruled state, the agitation is receiving a markedly different treatment. Unlike at Jantar Mantar, the BJP is in open solidarity with the protesters. Its leader Babulal Marandi even reprised Rahul Gandhi’s protest mode with a sit-in outside Soren’s residence.
For Soren, the demand for a CBI investigation also carries a political complication. He has himself spent five months in Birsa Munda jail before the 2024 general election following his arrest in a money-laundering case—an episode the Opposition has consistently portrayed as politically motivated. The chief minister therefore has reason to be wary of federal agencies even as the students insist that only an investigation by an agency outside the state machinery can restore public confidence.
The impasse is where Act I, Scene II of the Gen Z movement remains stuck for now: a recruitment system in institutional disarray, a government that has conceded almost everything except the one demand the protesters consider fundamental, and a generation of aspirants unwilling to accept that the institutions deciding their futures should be trusted merely because they say so.
The arrest of the former JPSC chairman, allegations surrounding the subjective outsourcing of critical examination work to the tainted TDPL, and the emerging inputs about manipulation of OMR sheets and even the subjective allocation of marks in earlier JPSC interviews have together dealt a devastating blow to the commission’s credibility. The institution now faces a massive trust deficit, with its processes and safeguards under a cloud of suspicion. For thousands of aspirants whose careers hinge on the integrity of these examinations, the anger and disillusionment are therefore not merely understandable—they are entirely justified.
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
