IMPHAL, May 21: Many candidates and their parents are unhappy with the manner the May 15 Combined Civil Services examination was conducted by the Manipur Public Service Commission, MPSC, and are demanding the declaration of the results be withheld until the certain matters of ambiguous instructions given to the candidates be sorted out.
Many of them said they are preparing to take the matter to the court if the MPSC does not pay heed to their complaints.
At the crux of their disappointment is instruction No. 9, in the instruction sheet distributed to the candidates along with the question papers. A photocopy of the instruction sheet was furnished to the Imphal Free Press by one of the aggrieved parents.
In the two sentences of a single paragraph contained in this instruction (No.9), two contrary messages were communicated. The first sentence said “There will be NO PENALTY for wrong answers.”
However the sentence that followed said just the opposite: “THERE WILL BE PENALTY FOR WRONG ANSWERS MARKED BY THE CANDIDATE IN THE OBJECTIVE TYPE QUESTION PAPERS”.
Three explanatory bulleted sub-paragraphs however suggest the latter message is the correct one and that there will be marks deducted for wrong answers amounting to one third of the marks meant for correct answer for the particular question.
It says “There are four alternative for the answer to every question. For each question for which a wrong answer has been given by the candidate, one-third (0.33) of the marks assigned to that question will be deducted as penalty.”
The second explanation says “If a candidate gives more than one answer, it will be treated as wrong answer even if one of the given answers happens to be correct and there will be same penalty as above to that question.”
The third explanation says “If a question is left blank, i.e. no answer is given by the candidate, there will be no penalty for the question.”
The aggrieved parties claimed that this serious instruction ambiguity was explained and clarified verbally at some of the exam centres, but unfortunately not all, inhibiting many candidates to attempt all the questions.
The exam centres where this clarification was not made, they said are Standard Roberth Higher Secondary School, CC Higher Secondary School, DM College of Arts, DM College of Commerce and Imphal College.
They also said there were four flawed questions and these were also verbally corrected in the examination halls. In some exam centres however, only two of these question errors were pointed out, they charged.
The aggrieved candidates and parents called for attention of the concerned authorities to take suitable corrective measures to avoid further legal complications as they would take the recourse if nothing is done.