A day before the National Eligibility-Entrance Test-Post Graduate (2024) was to be conducted, the exam was postponed. The reasons, reportedly, were that there were some credible intelligence inputs suggesting potential ‘impersonation’ or manipulation attempts in the examination.
The significance of this development was that the test was postponed on June 22nd, one day after the government notified the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 (The Act).
Exam paper leaks have been an issue for long and the government’s preparedness looked haphazard. The hearing about scrapping of NEET concluded with the Supreme Court refusing to cancel this years’ NEET-UG examination stating that there was little evidence to suggest that a systemic question paper leak occurred in a way that it could disrupt sanctity of the exam.
The CBI is investigating the NEET UG paper leak case and has arrested multiple people in relation to the case. It was reported that more than 10 people have been arrested by the CBI during the process of investigation.
In this context, it becomes important to understand what the new act promises in the realm of protecting the fairness and integrity of public examinations.
State specific laws dominated the regime until now
There have been multiple state specific legislations related to examination malpractices. Other than that, the body conducting the examination would release guidelines or regulations over malpractices. For example, Andhra Pradesh passed an act over this issue more than 25 years ago. The Andhra Pradesh Public Examinations (Prevention of Malpractices and Unfair Means) Act, 1997 has a jail term starting at 6 months for neglect of duties to 7 years for other serious offences under the act. Recently, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Rajasthan have also passed laws penalising paper leaks and other related offences.
Centre’s public examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024.
As the Ministry of Education and the autonomous agency under it-the National Testing Agency face criticism for cancelling the UGC-NET 2024 exam held in June 2024 due to intelligence inputs suggesting a compromise of exam’s integrity, the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions notified The Act which received the President’s assent in February.
What does the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 say?
Unfair Means
The purpose of the act is to prevent unfair means in public examinations. The act defines ‘Public Examination Authority’ as an authority as specified by the central government by a notification, from time to time for conducting the public examination. ‘Public Examination’ is defined as any examination conducted by the Public Examination Authority as specified in the Schedule of the act, or an authority notified by the Central Government. In the Schedule, the following are the authorities stated in the Schedule of The Act:
- Union Public Service Commission.
- Staff Selection Commission.
- Railway Recruitment Boards.
- Institute of Banking Personnel Selection.
- Ministries or Departments of the Central Government and their attached and subordinate offices for recruitment of staff.
- National Testing Agency.
- Such other authority as may be notified by the Central Government.
Unfair Means could include acts or omissions by individuals or groups or institutions in relation to leakage of question paper, taking possession of the Optical Mark Recognition Paper (s) without authorisation, directly or indirectly assisting the candidate taking examination, altering the assessment except to correct a bona fide error, violation of security measures, tampering with computer network, manipulation in seating arrangements, allocation of dates and shifts of candidates to facilitate adopting unfair means etc.
Section 5 of the act also prohibits the entry of a person with the intent to disrupt the conduct of public examination into the premises of the examination centre. It also prohibits the opening and distribution of question papers before the time fixed, by any person who is entrusted with the purpose of opening and distribution. Section 5(3) states that no person shall reveal more than what is authorised to, which would result in an undue advantage or wrongful gain.
Service providers
The act defines Service providers as “any agency, organisation, body, association of persons, business entity, company, partnership or single proprietorship firm, including its associates, subcontractors and provider of support of any computer resource or any material, by whatever name it may be called, which is engaged by the public examination authority for conduct of public examination.”
Essentially, the printers of question paper, the logistics providers for the papers etc are all covered under this definition. There are different and more severe penalties for Service Providers since there is a special duty entrusted to them.
Section 6 of the act states if any person, or group of persons or institutions commit any unfair means of a conspiracy for unfair means or disrupts the conduct of public examinations, the service provider is responsible to report such offence to police and the examination authority.
Offences and penalties
The offences under the act are all cognisable meaning that the police can arrest without a warrant, non-bailable-meaning that the bail is not a matter of right for the accused and non-compoundable-meaning that the accused cannot resolve the issue with a compromise.
Section 8 of the Act states that if a service provider or any person associated with it will be deemed to have committed an offence if he fails to report incidence of unfair means or commission of any offence.
Section 10 of the act states that resorting to unfair means would attract at least 3 years of imprisonment which could extend up to five years with fine up to Rs. 10 Lakh. The section also provides a special punishment for the service provider with a fine of Rs.1 Crore and the cost of examination if it resorts to unfair means, and to that extent makes the connivance of a director or a senior management personnel of the service provider liable to pay a fine of Rs. 1 Crore and an imprisonment between 3 and 10 years.
Investigation and special emphasis on organised crime
Organised Crime is defined in the act as an unlawful activity committed by a person or a group of persons indulging in unfair means in collusion and conspiracy to pursue or promote a shared interest for wrongful gain in respect of Public Examination. Section 11 states that if a person or group of persons, including the examination authority or service provider or any institution commits an organised crime, he shall be punished with imprisonment for a term not less than 5 years but may extend to 10 years of imprisonment; and a fine of not less than Rs. 1 Crore.
Miscellaneous
Section 16 gives powers to central government to notify rules to carry out provisions of the act; Section 17 mandates that rules be laid out in front of the Parliament for a total of period of thirty days. Section 13 deems the members, officers and employees of the Public Examination Authority to be public servants and Section 17 protects the action taken by them in good faith.
Will the public examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 make a difference?
This is one such kind of a law where you cannot go wrong with the legislative provisions but all of it could go wrong with the implementation of the act. Therefore, the answer to the question whether the act will make a difference or not lies in knowing whether the act is implementable by the established systems in the country or not.
The rules under Section 16 were notified on 23rd June 2024 by the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions-a ministry with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the helm since 2014. The institution that has been at the centre of the recent paper leak scandal- the National Testing Agency-NTA is under the Ministry of Education. The bodies covered by the rules are under various ministries such as Railway, Finance and Educations. Therefore, these bodies will have to adopt a streamlines standard procedure as laid down in the rules for effective implementation and cross ministry coordination. As far as act making a difference is concerned, we will soon know based on how the investigating agencies pursue the NEET paper leaks.
(The author is part of the CJP’s legal research team)
Related:
Abolish ‘discriminatory and imbalanced’ NEET exam: Justice A.K. Rajan Committee 2021
NEET 2024 Row: Supreme Court cancels grace marks, orders re-test for affected students