Police personnel manning the Telangana State Public Service Commission building in Hyderabad.
| Photo Credit: G RAMAKRISHNA
The huge question bank prepared by the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) with months of efforts using the services of subject experts will now go into the recycle bin to be permanently deleted in view of the question paper leakage of several exams.
The TSPSC has decided to prepare a fresh pool of questions, which is an onerous task. Despite the availability of the unused questions and those in the raw format that have been untouched by the accused in the paper leakage, the Commission doesn’t want to take any risks using the unused material from the already prepared pool.
Sources said the Commission officials will press the delete button soon from its systems and have already alerted the experts of various subjects to get on with the work of preparing new questions for the exams that have been cancelled or not been held so far. “This is a huge exercise and time-consuming process but there is no other option,” an official said. “It will take months before we get to the final shape.”
Preparation of question papers is not an easy task given the complex nature of exams, subjects and the confidentiality involved in it. The usual practice is to seek a few questions from people of integrity and prepare a bank of such questions to be finally utilised for preparing the exam paper. The anonymity of the question creators is maintained in such a way that no one knows who prepared the questions and for which exam they will be used and used at all finally. Some moderation is also done at top level to change the nature of questions.
A senior official revealed there is no guarantee that all the questions sent by the paper setters will be used and the percentage of questions of any individual used for the final paper is less than 10.
The Commission, which has already cancelled four examinations, has postponed two more examinations without conducting them. The Group-1 preliminary held in October last, AEE, DAO and AE exams have been postponed while two more exams – Town Planning Building Overseer which was to be held on March 12 and Veterinary Assistant Surgeon exams which were to be held on March 15 and 16 have been postponed. Dates for nine more examinations were announced earlier and the papers of all these exams have to be prepared fresh now.
Given the complexities involved, the entire recruitment exam schedule may go haywire, and it might take a few months for the final picture of the exam calendar to be announced as the process requires consultation with experts, preparation of new question papers, selection of questions and approval at various stages, apart from arrangements for conducting examinations.