Ashish Singh, BA LLB, Army Institute of Law, Mohali
Introduction
The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 was introduced in Lok Sabha on February 5, 2024. The bill's primary objective is to eradicate unlawful means in public examinations and to uphold the integrity of public examinations in India. This bill will work to establish a system of checking on the malpractices and irregularities in competitive examinations. It also aims to give assurance to the youth that their sincere and genuine efforts will be rewarded and that their future is safe.
Background
There have been a large number of cases where the question papers of the recruitment exams were leaked before the conduction of the examination. There were at least 48 instances of paper leak in 16 years in five states. The paper leaks affected the lives of at least 1.51 crore applicants for about 1.2 lakh posts. The paper leaks led to delays and cancellation of examinations. There was an absence of a specific substantive law to deal with unfair means adopted or offences committed. The phenomenon of constant paper leaks posed a great challenge in front of the government as of the state as a whole.
What are Unfair Means?
The Bill mentions at least 15 actions that amount to using unfair means to get wrongful benefit in the examination. The Bill specifies unfair means as (i) unauthorised access or leakage of question paper or answer key, (ii) assisting a candidate during a public examination, (iii) tampering with computer network or resources, (iv) tampering with documents for shortlisting or finalising of merit list or rank, and (v) conducting fake examination, issuing fake admit cards or offer letters to cheat, for monetary gain.
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