On Wednesday, the Bihar assembly passed an anti-paper leak law by voice vote to strengthen measures against anomalies in critical examinations.
The much-anticipated Bihar Public Examinations (PE) (Prevention of Unfair Means) Bill, 2024, seeks to prevent malpractices such as the leakage of question or answer papers, which has already resulted in the cancelation of multiple examinations.
The Bill imposes severe penalties for people who engage in such malpractices, including a three to five-year prison sentence and a Rs 10 lakh fine. Furthermore, if a service provider — whether a government entity or a private agency — commits malpractice, it would face a Rs 1 million fine and a four-year termination of its services.
A part of the overall cost of conducting the examination will be recovered from the offending service provider.
Bihar’s public examinations are administered by the Bihar Public Service Commission, Staff Selection Commission, and Bihar School Examination Board, which are collectively known as Public Examinations Authorities. The businesses that administer these exams are known as service providers.
The bill was passed by the Bihar government led by Nitish Kumar, following a significant controversy sparked by the paper leak scam tied to the NEET-UG.
The Bihar Police’s economic offences unit (EOU), which is investigating the NEET-UG 2024 paper leak, discovered that medical aspirants paid enormous sums ranging from Rs 30 lakh to Rs 50 lakh each to “brokers” participating in the conspiracy in order to obtain question papers ahead of the May 5 examination.
On Friday, the EOU took over the investigation from the Patna Police and seized many papers from the accused’s flats, including bank cheques and candidate roll codes.
The defendants, who ran an education consultancy service that offered to assist examinees in competitive tests, were arrested on May 5.