Test for forces gets fool-proof

Candidates appearing for recruitment examinations for the paramilitary forces can take home a carbon copy of their answer-sheets, compare their responses with online answer keys and can assure themselves that they haven't been short-changed.

Candidates appearing for recruitment examinations for the paramilitary forces can take home a carbon copy of their answer-sheets, compare their responses with online answer keys and can assure themselves that they haven't been short-changed.

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Union Home Minister P Chidambaram has cleaned up the dubious recruitment process for paramilitary forces to ensure that merit, and not money, gets people jobs in the forces.

Chidambaram has scrapped interviews, essay-type questions and marks for physical fitness. Instead, the home ministry has drawn up guidelines that would drive CRPF to go for machine-readable answer sheets.

Just in case anyone tries to tweak with the machine, the new guidelines allow candidates to take home a carbon copy of their answer-sheet, duly authenticated by the invigilator.

"The correct answers would be posted on the website and candidates would be able to figure how much they scored in the examination and question the organisation concerned if there are any discrepancies," a senior home ministry official said.

The fresh set of guidelines - aimed at plugging avenues for corruption - would make the process the first recruitment examination held by the central government to adopt transparency to this extent.

The first state police to insulate the recruitment process for the constabulary, however, was Karnataka, where an Indian Police Service officer Sunil Agarwal led the initiative in 2005.

It, however, took a scandal in the recruitment for Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) early this year for the home ministry to take note of the Karnataka model. In May, CBI arrested nine people including IG of CRPF in Bihar Pushkar Singh in this case.