Why civil service aspirants in Arunachal Pradesh had to answer questions drafted for Pakistan civil services

Candidates appearing for the exams conducted by the APPSC in November were left confused after questions did not make much sense to them

By: News Desk |
December 12, 2017 7:50 pm

It’s not only Gujarat where Pakistan has become a subject of raging political debate this poll season, India’s arch rival is also making ripples in Arunachal Pradesh for an entirely different reason.

The Arunachal Pradesh public service commission is embroiled in controversy after it allegedly copy pasted majority of the questions for last month’s combined competitive preliminary exams from a Pakistani website.

Candidates appearing for the exams conducted by the Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) in November were left confused after questions did not make much sense to them.

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It later emerged that over 50% of the questions were copy-pasted from www.cssforum.com.pk, a resource website for preparation of civil services exams in Pakistan.

Not only the Pak website, some questions were also lifted from the 2008 UPSC exams but without proper options to choose from, Hindustan Times reported.

The candidates also alleged that 90% of the questions in sociology were taken an online discussion forum. Additionally, the veterinary paper too had 60 questions taken from an online question bank Vetscan.

Students (Photo: PTI)

“Some of the questions in general studies, sociology and political science were in the context of a foreign country. We cross-checked and found they were straight out of the Pakistani resource site,” Hindustan Times quoted Tapi Omo, a candidate, as saying.

Nani Bath, a member of a steering committee formed to demand a re-examination of the prelims, said we cannot deny the possibility of a leak as most of the question papers of the examination were photocopied and some were also tampered with.

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Candidates have submitted a letter to APPSC secretary Onit Payeng seeking a recheck of the faulty question papers.

“The commission will take a call as early as possible if an expert panel finds errors in the question papers,” HT quoted Payeng as saying.

Notedly, this is not the first time state service commission is in news for wrong reasons. In 2015, allegations of a question paper leak led to the dismissal of four officials of the commission.