Hyderabad: The Eamcet question paper leak has come as a big blow for the Telangana state government. The last Eamcet leak incident was exactly two decades ago, in 1996.
Though there had been instances of malpractices like hi-tech copying using Bluetooth mobile phones etc., in the last five years in undivided AP, successive governments had thwarted these attempts with the help of intelligence and police departments even before the candidates had entered the exam centres, and had protected the credibility of Eamcet.
“Only three days ago, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao convened a meeting with education, police and intelligence officials on the Eamcet leak issue and gave specific instructions to deal with these kind of irregularities with an iron hand as they brought disrepute to the state. Officials are already on the job to find who is behind the scam and once investigation is complete, we will initiate stringent action against all those who are responsible,” said medical education minister C. Laxma Reddy.
TS Council of Higher Education and JNTU-Hyderabad play a major role in conducting Eamcet every year. JNTU-H conducts Eamcet on behalf of TSCHE.
These two institutions are now under government scanner regarding how the confidential information of where the Eamcet question papers were being printed was leaked.
There is also a question mark over the monopoly of JNTUH in conducting Eamcet every year. There was a procedure earlier to allot the responsibility of conducting various CETs like Eamcet, Icet, Edcet, Lawcet etc. to a different university on a rotation-basis every year.
But in the case of Eamcet, this method was ignored after the Eamcet leak in 1996, which was conducted by SV University, Tirupati, and JNTU-H has been given the responsibility every year since then.
With the same university conducting Eamcet every year for over 15 years, the university has set up a separate section to deal with Eamcet and several staff, including contract and outsourcing staff, were appointed. The government is probing whether this led to the leak of confidential information.
Kingpin Rajagopal operated smoothly
The kingpin of the Eamcet-2 question paper leak, R. Rajagopal Reddy, 63, runs a consultancy in Bengaluru. Reddy had leaked the Dr NTR University of Health Sciences PG Medical entrance que-stion paper in 2014, from Manipal Tech-nologies, where the question papers are printed. He was arrested by AP CID after an investigation.
He was released but continued his shady deals. Months before the Eamcet exam was held, Reddy struck a deal with the parents of the students, taking lakhs of rupees advance.
He also promised to train the students, providing the right answers before the exam. As a standard practice, three sets of question papers, each with 160 questions, are printed for the Eamcet entrance test and only one of them are released a few of hours before the exam.
Reddy got all the three sets of papers leaked two days before the examination. At least 10 people were working under the suspect to help him pull off these leaks. In 2014, he had placed one of his men as an employee months before the PGMET exam, only to leak the question paper.
