Revenue dept wants CID probe into surveyors' exam paper leak

Proposal comes two years after recruitments; test held in 2011

More than two-and-a-half years after recruiting land surveyors, the Revenue department has now recommended a CID probe into the complaint of question paper leak of the surveyors’ examination.

Revenue Minister Kagodu Thimmappa has recommended to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to order a CID probe into the issue. The examination, conducted by the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA), was held on October 14 and 15, 2011 to recruit 1,834 surveyors. Around 9,000 candidates had appeared for the examination. The recruitment was done after a gap of 15 years in the state, official sources in the government said.

The Survey Settlement and Land Records (SSLR) department had initially conducted a departmental inquiry and recommended to the government to hand over the case to an investigation agency. Subsequently the government directed the then Mysuru divisional commissioner V Jayanti to look into it and submit a report. The suspected leakage of question papers came to light after some aggrieved candidates from Mysuru faxed a six-page complaint to the SSLR, two days after the examination.

Sources in the SSLR said Thimmappa was briefed on how efforts were made to hush up the issue by misleading his predecessor V Srinivas Prasad. The then divisional commissioner too had found prima facia case and recommended a CID probe after conducting a preliminary inquiry in 2014. But the government chose to turn a blind eye and went ahead with the appointment of the surveyors, the sources added.

The complainants had provided many evidences to substantiate their charges. They had specifically said that the Paper II, the examination for which was held on October 15 was leaked. A copy of the leaked question paper (along with an answer key) was sold for Rs one lakh each a day before the examination. About 300 candidates in Bengaluru, Mysuru, Tumakuru, Hassan and Dakshina Kannada districts had bought the question paper. Names and register numbers of some of these candidates were also mentioned in the complaint.

A copy of the answer key sold to the candidates was also attached, with a request to cross-check it with the answer papers of the candidates who had indulged in malpractice. The regional commissioner had found that about 300 candidates had correctly answered all the 150 questions (multiple-choice questions) and, surprisingly, all their answers were identical.

Interestingly, as many as 1,182 of the 1,669 recruited candidates failed to pass an eligibility test conducted by the SSLR six months after the recruitment. The test was held after imparting six months of intense training. Even those who had secured top 10 ranks in the KEA examination were among those who failed the test, the sources said.