10 year jail term, Rs 1 crore fine: All you need to know about anti-cheating bill for public exams

 The bill aims to safeguard interest of meritorious students, claims govt 

The Week, February 06, 2024: The Lok Sabha on Tuesday passed a bill which seeks to deal sternly with malpractices and irregularities in government recruitment examinations, with provisions for a maximum jail term of 10 years and a fine up to Rs 1 crore

The government claims that the Piloting the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Bill, 2024 aims to safeguard the interest of meritorious students and candidates.

The bill proposes a high-level national technical committee that will make recommendations to make the computerised examination process more secure. 

The committee will look into developing protocols for insulating digital platforms, devising ways and means for developing foolproof IT security systems, ensuring electronic surveillance of examination centres and formulating national standards and services for both IT and physical infrastructure to be deployed for conduct of such examinations.

Objective of the bill - To bring in greater transparency, fairness and credibility to the public examination systems and to reassure the youth that their sincere and genuine efforts will be fairly rewarded and their future is safe.

Context of the bill - A series of competitive tests were cancelled recently due to question paper leaks: They included teacher recruitment exam in Rajasthan, Common Eligibility Test (CET) for Group-D posts in Haryana, recruitment exam for junior clerks in Gujarat and constable recruitment examination in Bihar.

What is public examination?

The term public examinations in the Bill refers to examinations conducted by authorities specified under the Schedule to the Bill, or notified by the central government.  These include:

Union Public Service Commission

Staff Selection Commission

Railway Recruitment Board

National Testing Agency

Institute of Banking Personnel Selection

Departments of the central government and their attached offices for recruitment

What are the offences specified in the bill?

Unauthorised access or leakage of question paper or answer key

Assisting a candidate during a public examination

Tampering with computer network or resources

Tampering with documents for shortlisting or finalising of merit list or rank

Conducting fake examination, issuing fake admit cards or offer letters to cheat, for monetary gain

Disclosing exam-related confidential information before time

Unauthorised people entering exam centres to create disruptions

What are the punishments?

All the above offences will be punishable with imprisonment of maximum 10 years, and a fine up to Rs 1 crore.