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TNPSC Group 4 exams: Finance min denies allegations of malpractice
On March 24, the TNPSC declared results for the Group 4 preliminary exams held in July 2022 to fill 7,301 vacancies in multiple government departments.
Amid reports that a mass number of candidates from two private academies cleared the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC) Group 4 preliminary exam, state finance minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan on Monday refused the malpractice allegations, calling them “baseless”.
The minister, however, has sought a detailed clarification from the commission’s member secretary.
Rajan was responding in the on-going assembly session where leader of Opposition and AIADMK’s interim general secretary Edappadi Palaniswami (EPS) called an attention motion on this issue. “Appropriate action will be taken if any malpractices, as claimed, have taken place,” Rajan said.
On March 24, the TNPSC declared results for the Group 4 preliminary exams held in July 2022 to fill 7,301 vacancies in multiple government departments.
“Nearly 700 candidates who appeared for the exam in Karaikudi had cleared the exam. Two thousand candidates who had appeared for the TNPSC exam last November in Tenkasi, too, had passed the exam, for which the results were announced this February,” alleged EPS.
The issue came to light after these private coaching centres advertised their students’ success in these exams. The finance minister explained that the allegations were completely different from the report that he had received from the TNPSC. Rajan said that the claim of the coaching centres in Karaikudi and Tenkasi that more than 700 and 2000 candidates have cleared the exams could not be true.
The Karaikudi centre would have different candidates for various positions to be taken into consideration while a person who is said to have advertised that about the 2,000 candidates in Tenkasi, is running his coaching centre in different names in several districts, Rajan said.
“I have asked the member secretary of TNPSC to thoroughly examine and provide a detailed clarification on similarity or difference in terms of district-wise and examination centre-wise distribution of selected candidates in the past and present for all exams,” he said
Rajan also revealed that he had received a demand for an additional ₹45 crore above the budget allocation to conduct the Group IV exams. “This extra amount was required because some 24 lakh people applied for about 10,000 posts,” Rajan said.
“Some 100 crore question papers were to be printed for them. About 6000 to 7000 invigilators were to be deployed, and each to be paid ₹400- ₹1000 allowance. I felt that it was such an outdated and inefficient way of conducting an exam. An annual exam being conducted for 24 lakh people on a single day is something that cannot be justified at all in these times when we have so many technological options.”
