Indian state civil service exam questions copied from Pakistani website

 

Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) in its competitive preliminary exams copied questions from a Pakistani website.

More than half the questions on the exam were copied from www.cssforum.pk a resource website for civil services examinations in Pakistan. 

First reported by the Hindustan Times, the APPSC examinations also lifted questions from the 2008 Union Public Service Commission exams but without proper options to choose from.

Almost 90% of the sociology questions were allegedly taken from an online discussion forum. The veterinary paper too had 60 questions taken from an online question bank Vetscan.

“Some of the questions in general studies, sociology and political science were in the context of a foreign country. We cross-checked and found they were straight out of the Pakistani resource site,” said a candidate Tapi Omo.

“As most of the question papers of the examination were photocopied and some were also tampered with, we cannot deny the possibility of a leak. Moreover, too much copy-pasting has been done while setting up the papers, which is illegal,” Nani Bath, member of a steering committee formed to demand a re-examination of the prelims, said.

Bath said the committee set a deadline for APPSC to re-conduct the preliminary exams within three months.

Speaking on the issue, social activist Patey Tayum remarked that making errors has become a habit for APPSC, and the state government needs to take a firm stand on the fiasco that could destroy the career of many young people.

This is not the first time that APPSC has been embroiled in a controversy of this nature. In 2015, it dismissed four officials after a paper was leaked before the exams.