New Delhi: Former civil servants have come together to raise the issue of India’s students. They are demanding Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation.
“When lakhs of students and their families suffer immense mental agony and financial strain due to preventable lapses in high-stakes examinations — examinations that dictate livelihoods and social mobility — those at the helm cannot abdicate their constitutional duties and evade responsibility for avoidable lapses,” reads an open letter signed by 73 retired IAS, IPS, IFS officers.
Part of the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), the civil servants expressed their “deep anguish and outrage” over the failures of national-level examinations.
“These systemic collapses have shattered the dreams and futures of millions of young Indians and severely eroded public trust in one of the most critical components of our democracy—the public education and merit system,” the letter read.
The officers allege that at this point, India’s evaluation bodies stand “completely compromised”. They pointed out that cases like paper leaks and other misconduct with competitive exams have been going on for years now; because of bribes, some candidates get an advantage.
“Why the National Testing Agency tasked with holding the NEET examinations is unable to rectify these flaws is inexplicable! In its obsession with centralised testing and selection systems, the Union government has paid scant regard to the dictum that decentralised functioning distributes risks and eliminates the chances of catastrophic, universal failures,” the letter read.
Adding to the issue of centralisation, the letter also mentions how Tamil Nadu and other states have made repeated requests to the Centre, to be allowed to carry out undergraduate and higher studies selection and exams. The current crisis happened because the Centre ignored such requests, alleged members of CCG.
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A call for accountability
Along with the NEET crisis, the letter also mentioned the new On Screen Marking (OSM), which CBSE was used for evaluation of Class 12 examination answer sheets. The officers write that the removal of the CBSE chairman and secretary was a case of “too little, too late”.
“This hid the deeper policy blind spots, lack of rigorous beta testing and oversight failures. We do not believe that the CBSE Chairman and Secretary alone could have been solely responsible for changing the tender conditions. There must have been some interest expressed from higher up.”
They added that undue administrative haste in the introduction of the OSM resulted in the overall pass percentage drop to a new low, as compared to the previous years. Students suffered, regional boards suffered. The CCG also mentioned Sarthak Siddhant, an 18-year-old student, without naming him, and highlighted how he exposed the flaws in the system with the help of an ethical hacker. And how that revealed the same firm responsible for the CBSE failure was blacklisted by the Telangana government in 2019. “What was even more disturbing was that tender conditions had been tweaked to enable this company to secure the contract, not once, not twice, but three times! The third change removed some requirements critical to the quality of the digital exercise.”
The CCG gave examples of former ministers who resigned in the past as accountable leaders and how the same responsibility falls on the current Education Minister.
“The future of our nation depends entirely on the fairness, transparency, and integrity of its education system. Any dilution of these standards is a direct betrayal of the right of all citizens to a dignified and secure future. We stand in absolute solidarity with the affected students and families of India.”