How to crack TNPSC: use disappearing ink, re-marked answer sheets

99 candidates barred for life, two tahsildars held for exam fraud

25/01/2020, S. VIJAY KUMAR ,CHENNAI

The Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC) on Friday debarred 99 candidates for life on charges of indulging in malpractice in the Group-IV Services examination conducted on September 1, 2019.

Three persons have been arrested so far in the case.

Crime Branch CID officers, probing the case, said the candidates used evaporating ink to mark the answers to objective type questions.

After the markings vanished a couple of hours later, two officials of the State government, entrusted with transporting the answer scripts to safe custody, inked in the right answers on the answer sheets.

39 in top 100

While 39 such candidates passed the exam and made it to the top 100 in the rank list, others could not clear the examination since the suspect officials did not have time to make entries in all the 99 answer scripts of candidates who appeared in the Rameswaram and Keelakarai centres of Ramanathapuram district, investigating officials said. “Further investigation revealed that the suspected agents, along with those on examination duty at these centres, had replaced answer sheets of 52 candidates,” the TNPSC said earlier in the day.

The TNPSC had conducted the Group-IV exams for filling 9,398 posts, for which 16,29,865 candidates appeared.

The results were declared on November 12 last year and the certificate verification of the successful candiates was under way when the fraud came to light.

A First Investigation Report (FIR) has been registered against the 99 candidates and the suspected agents, the TNPSC said.

Hours after registering a case, a special team under the direct supervision of Director-General of Police M.S Jaffar Sait cracked the case and unravelled the modus operandi of the suspects. Two suspect tahsildars were taken into custody in Ramanathapuram and brought to Chennai for interrogation. Special teams are on the lookout for one Jayakumar of Anna Nagar, Chennai, who is alleged to be the kingpin, and his associates.

Given two pens

According to officials, a source in the Directorate of Public Instruction campus passed on the details of applicants to the two tahsildars, who then contacted them with offers to help during the exam. After asking them to opt for Rameswaram or Keelakarai as the examination centre, the suspect officials collected ₹10 lakh-₹12 lakh from each of them as “service” charge.

The candidates were then given two pens on the day of the examination — one was a regular pen for writing the registration number and other identification details and the other was filled with evaporating ink to mark the answers.

“After the ink vanished an hour later, the suspect officials, who had the list of their candidates, then made fresh markings with the help of readily available answer keys. This is the first time that we have come across such a fraud,” a senior investigator told The Hindu.

RGUHS moots Rs 25L fine for giving up seat to counter seat blocking

TNN | Jan 25, 2020, 04.26 AM IST

Bengaluru: To put an end to the seat-blocking scam in medical colleges, the government is thinking of increasing penalty for candidates who reserve seats only to surrender them after the mop-up round.

Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences submitted a report to the medical education department recently, recommending the existing rules be changed.

“We want to bring in a rule that no seat can be surrendered after the mop-up round,” said Dr CN Ashwath Narayan, deputy chief minister and minister for medical education. The minister said he will place the report before the cabinet for approval.

Seats surrendered after the mop-up round are transferred to the management quota and sold at high prices. Penalty would be exempted in certain cases when the candidate would surrender a seat even after the mop-up round in case s/he got a seat in a better medical college.

However, the provision was misused by some candidates and colleges, leading to the infamous seat-blocking scam. The RGUHS report said students must be discouraged from surrendering seats and the penalty be increased to Rs 25 lakh from the existing Rs 5 lakh. Further, no medical college should admit a student after the cutoff date to avoid misuse.

2-year-old swallows button cell, docs take it out without surgery

TNN | Jan 25, 2020, 04.30 AM IST

Madurai: Doctors at the pediatric department of Government Rajaji Hospital in Madurai safely removed a lithium button cell or watch battery without surgery from a two-year-old boy from A.Kombai village in Dindigul district after he had accidentally swallowed it on Thursday.

The child, A Aadheeswaran, the fourth child of his parents, A Alagarsamy and A Periyakandhi, on Wednesday, swallowed a button cell by accident when he found it while playing at his house with friends. It was the size of a one-rupee coin. His parents, who are woodcutters, were at work when the incident happened. “As one of the children in the group noticed that my son swallowed the battery, they immediately called us for help. We rushed him to the Dindigul Government Hospital as he was having breathing difficulties but then he was referred to GRH in Madurai for better facilities,” Alagarsamy told TOI.

An X-ray revealed that the coin-shaped battery that was roughly around 20 mm in diameter and around 2 mm in height was lodged vertically in the lower part of the boy’s oesophagus or food pipe. “A team of doctors from the pediatric department and the department of gastro-enterology performed a minimally invasive procedure on Thursday afternoon to remove the foreign body,” said GRH dean Dr J Sangumani.

The doctors said that an endoscopic tube was inserted through the boy’s mouth to remove the battery. There was no complications post the procedure and the boy could also breathe without any respiratory support, doctors added. However, he has been advised not to intake any liquid or solid food for a few days and is being given IV drips.

HC orders notice to fisheries varsity VC, registrar

TNN | Jan 25, 2020, 04.59 AM IST

Madurai: Madras high court has ordered notice on a plea moved by the Fisheries University Teachers Association against the vice-chancellor (VC) and registrar of Tamil Nadu Dr J Jayalalithaa Fisheries University, Nagapattinam, for mismanagement in administration.

In her petition, the Tuticorin-based association’s general secretary R Jeyashakila stated that VC S Felix and registrar A Srinivasan were involved in total mismanagement of administration, student admissions, staff recruitment and financial misappropriation at the university. She stated that the main objective of establishing the university was the development of fisheries and research in fisheries sciences. The university has affiliated colleges at Tuticorin, Ponneri, Nagapattinam and Thalanayeru.

Jeyashakila said the VC started nine self-financial colleges offering 10 different degree courses within two and a half years, without the approval of the government which was mandatory under the Tamil Nadu Fisheries University Act. Under the Act, no new college imparting education in fisheries science can be established as a constituent or affiliated college of the university. She stated that by starting these self-financing colleges, the VC had diverted a huge sum of money from the university corpus fund and other government funds due to which the regular degree programmes are deprived of sufficient funds.

She further said that there were malpractices in the recruitment process as the VC and registrar had created new university officer posts. The VC had also issued 83 transfer orders in the two and a half years without following procedures. Since the VC would retire on April 21, it was necessary to initiate an inquiry against him and the registrar in this regard. She stated that she had also submitted representations to the authorities concerned, but no actions were taken so far.

Hence the petitioner moved HC Madurai bench seeking inquiry against the VC and registrar under the provisions of the Act. When the petition was heard on Friday, Justice M S Ramesh ordered notice to the VC and registrar of the university and adjourned the case to a further date for hearing.

Lawyer of Nirbhaya case convicts making fun of system: Manish Sisodia

PTI | Jan 24, 2020, 04.38 PM IST

NEW DELHI: A lawyer, appearing for two of the four convicts in the Nirbhaya case, is "making fun" of the system by using "tactics" to delay their hanging, Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia alleged on Friday.

The AAP leader's comments came after advocate A P Singh on Friday moved a Delhi court alleging that Tihar jail authorities are yet to release the documents required to file curative petitions for Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Singh (25).

The laws should be changed for ensuring speedy justice, Sisodia said.

"In the Nirbhaya case, the lawyer is using tactics to delay the execution. In this way, he is making fun of the system.

"We must work together to ensure speedy justice. So that laws can be amended to remove shortcomings," he said in a tweet in Hindi.

The Supreme Court had recently dismissed the curative petition for the other two convicts in the 2012 gangrape and murder case Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Mukesh Singh (32).

The hanging of all the four convicts is to take place on February 1 at 6 am, as per a court order.

On the intervening night of December 16 and 17 in 2012, a 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gang raped and brutally assaulted in a moving bus in south Delhi by six people before she was thrown out on a road.

(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme Court directives on cases related to sexual assault)

Students can't be burdened with contractual employees' salaries in govt-run institutions: Delhi HC to JNU

PTI | Jan 24, 2020, 07.56 PM IST

NEW DELHI: Burden of paying contractual employees in state-run educational institutions cannot be put on students and the government has to find the funds, the Delhi high court said on Friday, asking the Jawaharlal Nehru University to allow those who have not yet registered for the winter session to do so under the old hostel manual.

The observation came after additional solicitor general Pinky Anand, appearing for JNU, told the court hostel fees were hiked on a direction by the University Grants Commission, to all varsities, that they have to pay salaries of daily wage/contractual/out-sourced staff employed by them.

The ASG, assisted by advocates Harsh Ahuja and Kushal Sharma, said 90 per cent of JNU students have paid the increased fee and it would not be fair to allow the remaining 10 per cent to register for the winter semester as per the older hostel manual.

To this, the court said, "Those who have paid, have paid. If 90 per cent have paid, then your financial concerns have been more or less taken care of. Rest of the funds you can arrange. For now engage with students, have a dialogue with them".

"The burden of paying contractual employees salary cannot be put on students in government-run institutions. You (varsity) need to find the money. Maybe the ministry of human resource development can find the funds. The government has to fund public eduction. It cannot get out of it," justice Rajiv Shakdher said.

He also issued notices to JNU, the ministry and UGC, seeking their stand on a plea by JNU Students Union against the new hostel manual.

The court said students of the reserved category, who come in the remaining 10 per cent, can also register as per the old manual and they should get registered within a week.

It directed the varsity to not levy late payment charges or penalty on students registering after the court's order.

Senior advocate Akhil Sibal, appearing for the students union, told the court since the election of 2018-19, the varsity has stopped engaging with student leaders and their views are being sought "less and less" on issues concerning the students.

The JNUSU office-bearers, in their plea filed through advocate Abhik Chimni, have challenged the minutes of the separate meetings held by the Inter Hostel Administration (IHA), the Executive Council and a high-level committee to amend and later approve the new manual, saying they were not consulted at any stage of the proceedings.

The entire process was conducted in a "tearing hurry" by the varsity, which went ahead and implemented the manual mid-term even as students were involved in talks with the HRD Ministry, Sibal told the court.

On this, the court said to JNU it should have included the representatives of the students union in its meetings on amending the hostel manual.

It asked if the HRD ministry can engage in a dialogue with students why can't the varsity do the same.

The JNUSU's petition has sought directions to quash the new hostel manual "illegally approved by the IHA as the decisions taken by the IHA are malafide, arbitrary and illegal and adversely affect the students".

It has claimed the decisions to amend the hostel manual are contrary to provisions of the JNU Act, 1966, Statutes, Ordinances and the Hostel Manual.

"The amendments include reducing JNUSU representation in IHA, increased rates as applicable to hostel residents and also brought amendments to clauses of the Hostel Manual adversely affecting reserved category students in the University," the plea submitted.

Earlier, the rent was Rs 10 and Rs 20 for double and single-occupancy rooms respectively.

The rent for all students, including those with Junior Research Fellowship, Senior Research Fellowship and other equivalent scholarships or fellowships, for single and double-seater rooms has been hiked to Rs 600 and Rs 300 per month.

The rent for Below Poverty Line (BPL) category students for double and single-seater rooms has been increased to Rs 150 and Rs 300 per month respectively.

Earlier, there was no utility and service charge, but now the university will charge BPL students Rs 500 and other students Rs 1,000 for the same.

On utility charges, ASG Anand told the court that it has been waived for the current session.

The petition has also challenged the minutes of IHA Meeting which states that mess services sanitation services, room charges, amongst others category of charges will be increased by 10 per cent every academic year.

The Executive Council of JNU showed total "non-application of mind" when creating a 'Below Poverty Line' category of students, the plea contended.

On this, the ASG said it was actually economically weaker section (EWS) and not BPL category.

Delhi: Tihar writes to Nirbhaya convicts’ kin

TNN | Jan 25, 2020, 04.07 AM IST

NEW DELHI: The Tihar Jail authorities have written to the parents of Nirbhaya’s rapists and killers to inform them that the date for carrying out the death sentence imposed on their sons is February 1. In the letter, the jail authorities said that the hanging would take place at 6am. It asked the relatives, if they wanted to, to approach the jail authorities next week and apply for permission to meet the death-row convicts.

Sources said that upon the receipt of the letter by their families, Mukesh Singh has confined himself to his cell, while Vinay Sharma has become aggressive. Sharma has been requesting the jail authorities to allow him to meet a friend in jail number 4, whom he became emotionally attached to after he was sentenced to death. Jail sources also disclosed that the behaviour of Pawan Gupta and Akshay Thakur remained normal.

Though there has been no change in Singh’s eating regimen, he has stopped interacting much and is reticent even with relatives who visit him. Sharma, on the other hand, is aggressive during meals and refuses to eat, and is being counselled. As for his request to meet his friend, jail officials said he would not be allowed to meet anyone once he is shifted to a solitary cell.

On Friday, the parents of Singh and Sharma were allowed to meet them for half an hour each. The former’s parents were accompanied by another person, whose identity is as yet unascertained, who quietly counselled him for some time.

Officials revealed that preparations were under way for the hanging on February 1. A doctor has been appointed to check the four convicts. For health reasons, the quartet has been advised to remain calm and have their meals on time.

A big challenge for the authorities is to keep the four men from harming themselves. In order to do this, the jail officials have been swapping their cells and not allowing anyone to stay for more than two days in a particular cell lest they figure out ways to commit suicide or hurt themselves, according to sources. The convicts are even accompanied to the toilets by security officers. Before the men are moved into new cells, these are inspected by a team led by a jail superintendent. The cells remain well lit even at night to allow security personnel to keep an eye on the convicts inside.

While more than 40 police personnel have been deployed in this particular ward in jail number 3, a specially trained team from Tamil Nadu Special Police is posted outside the cells holding the convicts. Team members have been instructed not to communicate with the doomed men in any circumstances.

(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme Court directives on cases related to sexual assault)