by Pallavi Sareen
Jammu
Scores of students alleged the authorities manning a vital examination denied them entry. They later gathered outside the back gate of Government College for Women, Parade, after being denied entry into the college to sit in the Central Armed Police Forces (ACs) Examination conducted by Union Public Service Commission (UPSC).
KL image by Pallavi Sareen
The exam was to begin at 10 am and according to the norms laid down by UPSC, the gate would be closed to the entrants 10 minutes before the exam timing. The students complained that they had arrived at the front gate twenty minutes before the exam timing and the gates were closed. There was no notification or notice to tell them that entries were not to be done from the front gate of GCW Parade but the back gate which lies opposite Akash Institute in Kachi Chawni area.
The college authorities say that they had posted a guard on the gate to guide the candidates towards the back gate and he was there since 9:20 am. Amidst this confusion, many candidates could not appear in the exam and lost one of the six attempts of sitting in a UPSC exam.
Some students had written a representation to Divisional commissioner demanding relief since it was the fault of the college’s mismanagement because of which their time was wasted and they could not appear in the exam. While a crowd of 25-30 students were there at the gate around 11:30 am figuring out what was to be done, the total number of students that were denied entry according to them ranged from 120-130. But the representation given has only seven names on it for the aspirant aggrieved: “Seema Devi, Arti Sharma, Shamshad Begum, Murat Kabir, Swati Jasrotia, Neelam, Roll no 3402510” and “all others” is mentioned.
“Some of us come from Samba, some from Chenani and some from Akhnoor. We don’t know which the back gate is. We reached the college premises on time and at that time no one was there at the front gate. By the time we reached the back gate, there were still two minutes left but they had closed the gates. Nobody understands how hard we have worked for this. We stayed up studying all night and now we even knocked on the door and asked them to let us in but they wouldn’t,” said Rahul Sharma, one of the candidates.
“The front-gate is the widely known entrance of Parade College. Candidates were coming from far-flung areas. For someone who barely made it ten minutes before the exam, saying that you have to go to the back gate and then closing the entrance is unfair. There should have been a pre-warning, so we could have come a little early or they should have given a grace period of time for people who didn’t know. If there was some problem with the front entrance of college, then it should not have been used as a centre for the exam. Why should we suffer for their infrastructural deficiency?” said Zaheer Abbas, another candidate.
“We have some construction work going on near our front entrance which is why we had put a guard on the main entrance to guide the students to the back gate. Regarding the closing of the back gate, we have to adhere to the norms laid down by the UPSC. The aggrieved students were probably late and are now concocting a story that there was no one on the front gate and that the gates were closed early,” said Hemla Aggarwal, Principal GCW Parade.
