KOHIMA— The Nagaland Public Service Commission (NPSC) on Tuesday admitted that some questions in the recently conducted Combined Technical Services Examination (Engineering services) 2023 were repeated, and said it would discuss and decide whether or not to re-conduct the exam.
It came a day after the Naga Students' Federation (NSF) and Combined Technical Association of Nagaland (CTAN) requested the commission to re-conduct the recruitment exam citing anomalies in the question paper.
Controller of Examinations, NPSC, Khrieo Rutsa, told Eastern Mirror on Tuesday that the syllabus for the CTSE civil engineering diploma and civil engineering degree are "almost the same."
Since the questions for the degree and the diploma exams are set by different people, there are "many chances of repetition," he admitted.
He also said that the questions were set by firms from outside the state, the commission "doesn't know what is inside (the question papers)."
The question papers are usually taken to the exam halls “packed and sealed” which are then opened in the presence of the candidates. The commission came to know about the "discrepancies" and "errors" in the question papers only after the packages were opened inside the exam hall, he added.
The commission will decide whether or not to re-conduct the exam as demanded by the organisations, he said, adding that the CTAN came to the commission's office on Monday regarding the matter.
[bsa_pro_ad_space id=1]For now, the commission will prepare key answers and once published, a window of grievances will be opened to the candidates. The commission will look into the complaints and make decisions accordingly, Rutsa said, adding that the commission will discuss and decide very soon.
NPSC Secretary, Nungsangmenla Imchen also said that the commission does not "cross-check" the questions that come straight from the firms which are "very confidential".
No other NPSC officials except the controller of examination have access to these firms, she said.
While admitting that some questions were “repeated and copied from the civil engineering degree question papers,” she said “there is no rule that the questions should not be repeated but then we also found questions repeated.”
It may be mentioned that the NSF had demanded the NPSC to re-conduct recruitment exam for five posts of Motor Vehicle Inspector (Grade -III), claiming that question no. 1 to 30 were asked from the survey diploma course which has no connection with automobile course, while some questions were repeated.
The CTAN also claimed that in the recently concluded examination (CTSE civil engineering diploma), conducted on June 7, a total of 177 questions (84 questions from paper 1 and 93 questions from paper 2) were "repeated/copied from civil engineering (degree)” question papers, the exam of which was conducted on June 6.
[bsa_pro_ad_space id=1]The association further demanded normalisation of marks and re-examination of civil engineering (degree) 2023 papers, wherein 22 questions in paper 1 and 54 in paper 2 were copied from CESE 2022.
It urged the commission to be "more responsible as the trend of copy-pasting from the previous year's question paper.
Convenor of CTAN, Meshenlo Kath expressed hope that the commission will re-conduct the exam as it is a "genuine" issue with almost 50% of the questions being "copy-pasted/repeated". He informed that the CTAN has submitted a representation to the commission on the issue.
A similar incident happened in 2021 for Computer Applications and Computer Science exam where 90% of the questions were copy-pasted from the previous year's question paper, resulting in the re-conduct of the examination, Kath said.
He further expressed doubt on quality of questions being prepared by the companies from outside the state.