PUNE: The state government on Sunday deferred recruitment exams for the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), following the arrest of three persons from Pune.
The director of a software company that conducts examinations for MHADA is among the three arrested, for their alleged role in leaking the question paper for the recruitment examination that was to be held at multiple locations in Maharashtra, starting Sunday.
The MHADA recruitment examination was to be held at various centres across state with more than 275,000 candidates were to appear for jobs under classes ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’.
The government had outsourced work of conducting examination to a private firm, whose director along with two others have been arrested by the police.
Based on information received during the investigation into the recruitment exam question paper leaking out, Pune police formed multiple teams that went to Pune, Thane, Jalna, Beed, and Aurangabad.
A team of police officials in Thane and Pune intercepted a Hyundai Creta car in Vishrantwadi and found three people identified as Santosh Harkal, Ankush Harkal, and Dr Pritish Deshmukh in it. The car was registered in the name of Santosh Harkal in Aurangabad. The three were represented by Advocate Vijaysinh Thombre, Digvijay Thombre, and Hitesh Sonar in court, where they were remanded to police custody till December 18.
Dr Deshmukh, director of GS Solution Technologies company, was tasked with conducting MHADA exams that were scheduled for December 12, 15, 19, and 20. Police officials said the company was to handle 14 sets of question papers in three groups each. On the laptop and pen-drive seized from the three, exam-related documents were found, according to Amitabh Gupta, Commissioner of Pune police.
{{/usCountry}}Dr Deshmukh, director of GS Solution Technologies company, was tasked with conducting MHADA exams that were scheduled for December 12, 15, 19, and 20. Police officials said the company was to handle 14 sets of question papers in three groups each. On the laptop and pen-drive seized from the three, exam-related documents were found, according to Amitabh Gupta, Commissioner of Pune police.
{{/usCountry}}The police had received information about possible leak of the MHADA paper during the investigation of the health department paper leak case registered at cyber police station in November. Upon receiving information, the Pune police formed multiple teams and started chasing two groups of people for possible MHADA leak.
Two clusters of examinations for high-level posts including executive, assistants, deputy, and junior engineers among others were to be held on Sunday - one in the morning and one in the evening - according to the police.
Simultaneously, second team intercepted and arrested three people identified as Ajay Chavan of Target Career Point class, Krushna Jadhav and Ankit Chankhore of Saksham Academy. They were found in possession of documents of three aspirants of MHADA examination. However, in addition to those documents, they were also found in possession of documents belonging to 16 aspirants of health department group C and 35 aspirants of group D examinations. They were also found in possession of blank cheques which are believed to have been given by these aspirants, according to Commissioner Gupta.
“There is a sanctity to any examination procedure and we were confident that it was definitely breached by what we found in their possession. There was an entire gang operating from Aurangabad which was supplying these papers and a nexus of coaching classes was also involved. We are not sure how they planned to convey this information to the students,” said Gupta.
Nitin Sapatrao Mane, 47, an officer of MHADA in Pune lodged a complaint in the case of paper leak.
A separate case was registered under the same sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Maharashtra Prevention of Malpractices at University, Board and other specified Examinations Act, 1982. The new case was registered at cyber polcie station of Pune under Sections 406, 409, 120(b) of IPC along with Sections 3, 5, 6, and 8 of the state law.
Postponement announcement on Twitter
A state minister took to Twitter to announce the postponement of the examination to January 2022.
“While apologising to all the aspiring students, I announce that due to unavoidable and technical difficulties, tomorrow’s exam and the ones scheduled after it have been postponed to January. I’m making this announcement at this hour in the night (2am) to inform the students in time to not leave their houses and go to the exam centre,” said Jitendra Awhad, cabinet minister of Maharashtra, in a video statement he released at 2am on Twitter.