Several job aspirants, on July 24, staged a protest in front of the secretariat demanding the announcement of results for the exams conducted by the now-disbanded Himachal Pradesh Staff Selection Commission (HPSSC) at the earliest.
The state government, on February 21, dissolved the HPSSC located in Hamirpur, after the paper leak scam for recruitment of junior office assistants (IT) was unearthed on December 23 last year.
Since the commission was disbanded and the vigilance bureau is looking into exams that were administered during the previous three years, the HPSSC was unable to conduct the exams that were scheduled for various postings.
During the protest, candidates demanded immediate declaration of the pending results of the examinations condcuted by the HPSSC. The protesters demanded that, even if the vigilance department was looking into the examination procedure, the results be made public and the chosen candidates be offered conditional offers of employment so that anyone later found guilty of engaging in fraud might have their employment terminated.
Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, on several occasions, had said his government was making all-out efforts to declare the pending results of the HPSSC exams.
Terming the chief minister's assurances for result declaration "a bundle of lies", the protestors said they had prepared for government jobs for years but now were forced to wait for results and feared that they would not be able to fulfil the age criteria for the jobs if they were asked to retake the exams.
Aspirants added that they would continue protests till the results are declared. So far, leaks have been detected in about 30 examinations conducted by the HPSSC in the past. The vigilance department is probing irregularities in 22 examinations.
(With PTI Inputs)
