Supporters of Independent MP Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav on Friday held a rail blockade at Sachiwalay Halt station in Patna to demand cancellation of the recent Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) exam and the police dubbed Jan Suraaj founder Prashant Kishor’s fast unto death as “illegal” .
Kishor has been on fast unto death since Thursday to press the same demand – cancellation of the 70th Combined Competitive Examination (CCE) conducted by the BPSC on December 13.
"My primary demand, of course, is the cancellation of the exam held on December 13 and conducting a fresh test. I have also heard of allegations that posts to be filled by the exam were virtually put on sale. Such corrupt officials must be identified and brought to justice," Kishor, who was accompanied by many supporters, said on Thursday.
Kishor's protest site was barely a couple of kilometres from Gardani Bagh, where civil service aspirants have been holding a round-the-clock sit-in for nearly two weeks.
The administration said the fast unto death at Gandhi Maidan is "illegal as it is not the designated site for holding protests,” an official said.
The CPI(ML) Liberation also announced that its students' wing AISA, along with like-minded organisations, would stage a demonstration in front of the CM's residence during the day "to compel Nitish Kumar to break his silence" on the issue.
More than five lakh candidates had appeared for the December 13 exam. Hundreds of candidates at Bapu Pariksha Parisar centre here boycotted the test, alleging that the question paper was leaked.
The BPSC termed the allegation as a conspiracy, though a fresh test was ordered for more than 10,000 candidates who had appeared for the exam at the Bapu Pariksha Parisar centre.
These candidates have been asked to appear on January 4 at 22 newly designated centres across the city.
Varsha Singh, 27, a student from Bailey Road, Patna, pointed out to The Telegraph Online what she called the repeated changes in the BPSC exam pattern. She has been appearing for the exam for four years now.
“Earlier, there was no negative marking and the cutoff was very high. This year, I prepared in depth based on the previous years' patterns but to my surprise the questions were all one-liners,” she said.
While she appreciated Prashant Kishor’s support, she criticised his actions during the lathicharge on protesters on December 29, 2024.
“We are just students having no interest in politics. I do understand that everyone looks for their profit. If Prashant Kishor’s real agenda is to get us justice then it is well and good. On the day of lathicharge he told the students that he will take the first lathi, but the lathicharge started only after he left that day. When the lathicharge started, he would have been the hero of Bihar if he came that day to stop it,” she said.
Another BPSC aspirant from Patna, Rajan Kumar Tiwari, 28, described the scene during the December 13 exam at Bapu Pariksha Parisar, where many students didn’t even receive question papers on time.
“I know up to 2pm a lot of students did not even get the question paper on December 13. Now the exam for these 18,000 students will take place again; isn’t it a game of words? Now they are saying that there will be marks-scaling to release the results? But what is the difference between normalisation and scaling. Are India and Bharat different? There should be a re-exam for all of us as this is not fair. This has happened before in BPSC in the year 2022 where within two hours the entire exam was cancelled due to unfair practices of paper leak,” he said.
He supported Kishor’s hunger strike. “We are not asking for the sky; just a fair process,” he said.
Atul Kumar, 28, from Gopalganj, said that the protests are being led by students, not Prashant Kishor.
“Whatever Prashant Kishor is doing now is political but I would like to add that this is a protest of students and it will remain a protest of students and he has no involvement in this. He is not leading our protests, people are thinking that he is our minister in this protest and we have not actually given that title to anybody. Whatever he is doing is completely different and he has already broken our trust in the past on the day of lathicharge,” he said.