Jharkhand Assembly passes bill to impose jail term, fine for misconduct in job examinations

Jharkhand: Jail to candidates, life imprisonment along with fine up to 10 crore to others for misconduct in job examinations Jharkhand Assembly passes ‘The Jharkhand Competitive Examination (Measure for Control and Prevention of Unfair Means in Recruitment) Bill, 2023’

RANCHI: To crack down on the use of unfair means and irregularities in examinations and curb the incidents of question paper ‘leaks’, ‘The Jharkhand Competitive Examination (Measure for Control and Prevention of Unfair Means in Recruitment) Bill, 2023’ passed on the fifth day of monsoon session of Jharkhand Assembly.

As per the bill, if an examinee is caught cheating or making others cheat, he could be sentenced to a period of up to one year in jail and imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh.

For second-time offenders, the jail term could go up to three years and a fine of up to Rs 10 lakh.

There is also a provision of a fine of up to Rs 2-10 crore for any kind of misconduct by coaching centres and other educational institutions in addition to imprisonment for a minimum of 10 years up to a life term.

If the charge sheet is filed against any candidate in the court, he will be barred from appearing in any examination for 2 to 5 years.

And if he is convicted by the court, the candidate will not be able to appear in the examination for 10 years.

Notably, there is a provision of sending the candidate and the agencies to jail without any preliminary investigation and registration of an FIR in case they are caught adopting unfair means during competitive examinations, which was opposed strongly by the opposition parties.

BJP and AJSU MLAs walked out in the House tearing a copy of the bill and saying that they will go to Raj Bhavan and Court against the bill.

BJP MLA Amar Kumar Bouri said it will lead to harassment for the job aspirants and give the opportunity to corrupt officials to misuse the law.