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After complaints of exam mismanagement, health department serves notice to Nyasa
PUNE: Following series of complaints from candidates pertaining to mismanagement, state health department on Tuesday served a show-case notice to Nyasa Communication Private Limited (NCPL), a private firm contracted by the Maharashtra government to operate its recruitment examination for 6,200 posts of the state health department
PUNE: Following series of complaints from candidates pertaining to mismanagement, state health department on Tuesday served a show-case notice to Nyasa Communication Private Limited (NCPL), a private firm contracted by the Maharashtra government to operate its recruitment examination for 6,200 posts of the state health department.
Confirming about the notices Dr Archana Patil, director of the state health services department, said, “Today we have served a show cause notice to Nyasa seeking explanation regarding the mismanagement reported on October 24 at some of the centres in Pune, Nashik and Mumbai.”
The state health department also asked aspirants as not to consider the earlier hall tickets issued for the class ‘D’ exam to be held on October 31 and new hall tickets will be issued soon amid call given by candidates to boycott Sunday’s exam, while demanding the private agency be replaced. Earlier in September, the exam had to be cancelled as Nyasa informed government about its lack of preparations last moment, bringing embarrasment to the government as over 8 lakh candidates have applied for the exam.
After series of issues, seen at the first recruitment exam of the state health department on Sunday, October 24, The MPSC Students Coordination Committee has initiated a campaign against Nyasa Communication Private Limited (NCPL) to whom the state government has outsourced the conduct of its exams and against whom there are a series of allegations. The MPSC Students Coordination Committee has started a social media campaign demanding cancellation of the forthcoming exam on October 31 and re-examination for both days to be conducted by a new agency instead of NCPL.
Mahesh Gharbude, a student and coordinator of the MPSC Students Coordination Committee, said, “We all have seen how students had to suffer on the exam day with most of them not getting their hall tickets, question papers reaching late, and wrong papers being distributed. The state government should stop playing with the lives of lakhs of students who are appearing for these exams in the hope of finding jobs and helping their families in the time of crisis.”
“To ensure that our voice reaches the state government and chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, we have started this online campaign on social media platforms demanding cancellation of the upcoming exam and the conduct of a re-exam for both days by another firm. We are going to boycott the October 31 exam in large numbers and protests will be held by students at all the examination centres across the state,” Gharbude said.
The state government has outsourced the conduct of its exams to NCPL and as per the existing agreement between the two parties, the department only provides the question papers and all other arrangements including designing the website, handling online applications, providing hall tickets to students, allotting examination centres, seating arrangements and publishing the merit list are carried out by NCPL.
Earlier too, NCPL was blamed for the fiasco wherein the government had to cancel the exam at the eleventh hour owing to lack of preparation in filling up over 6,200 vacant posts in the state health department. The same recruitment exam was originally scheduled on September 25 and 26 however as NCPL could not make the necessary arrangements in time and students faced several issues with the hall tickets and examination centres, the exam had to be cancelled. As many as 800,000 job aspirants have applied for various posts under groups C and D in the public health department.
Speaking to HT earlier on Oct 17, Puneet Kumar, NCPL MD had
“We are doing our preparations well to conduct an error-free examination, learning lessons from previously scheduled exams. The allegations made against us are not true and we are going through the policy set by the state government.”
