The state primary education board has announced through a notice that the original OMR (the copy that is available with the board) of each candidate who wrote the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) on December 11 “is fully protected under the safe custody” of the board.
The board issued the clarification a day after Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the high court asked the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to question the candidates whose purported OMR (optical mark recognition) sheet-photocopies were found in the house of Trinamul youth leader from Hooghly, Kuntal Ghosh, who is now in custody.
A notice issued by Partha Karmakar, deputy secretary (academic) of the board, says: “It is further notified that tampering with the OMR sheets externally is not possible technically.
“Upon adhering to all examination-related standard protocols, the board will publish results of TET-2022 shortly in a clear and transparent manner.”
Appearing on behalf of the board, a lawyer on Monday informed Justice Gangopadhyay that even after the board had taken all possible measures to make the latest recruitment process transparent, some people were still allegedly engaged in malpractices.
At the end of the TET on December 11, the candidates were asked to hand their OMR answer sheets (pink in colour) to the invigilators. The candidates were given copies of their OMR sheets so they could compare their answers with the model answers the board would upload on its website, said a board official.
But the board’s claim of conducting the recruitment process in a transparent manner suffered a jolt when purported OMR sheet-photocopies were found in the house of the Trinamul leader, said an education department official.
The notice by the board’s deputy secretary seeks to allay fears pertaining to OMR sheets. “For authentication, all the TET-2022 participants/ examinees will be able to match their own OMR sheets(examinees’ copy) with their compatible original sheet to be displayed during expository reading of the results on portal, upon publication of TET2022 results by the board,” says the notice.
Justice Gangopadhyay had on September 27 asked the CBI to find out under which law former board president Manik Bhattacharya had destroyed the OMR sheets of 12.5 lakh candidates who had written TET 2014.
