Police investigations into the alleged Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) 2020 irregularities have revealed as many as 7,800 aspirants had their test results tampered in exchange for money. A detailed report listing names of all the candidates involved in the scam will soon be submitted to the education department and the state government.
Clearing the TET exams is a mandatory qualification to teach in the state’s 64,123 government-administered and 7303 government-aided elementary (classes I-VIII) schools. TET 2020 had a total of 3.43,284 candidates appear of which 16,705 qualified the examinations.
The Pune police which first investigated malpractices in the TET 2020 found similar malpractices in the 2018 TET too. The Police had earlier indicated 550 failed candidates had rigged their results in the 2018 and 2020 TET. Each candidate allegedly paid as much as Rs 1-2.5 lakh for clearing the exam. Corrupt government officials, agents, coaching classes, technical consultants and even software companies involved in conducting the exams were said to have collected Rs 9.5 crore for TET 2018 and TET 2020 alone.
The modus operandi purportedly involved asking the candidate to leave the optical mark recognition (OMR) sheet that candidates fill during the exam blank. The sheets would then be filled by the alleged manipulators marking the right options before forwarded them (the sheets) for evaluation. The Pune police examined the optical mark recognition (OMR) sheet of all TET 2020 qualifying candidates before finding 7,800 tampered results.
“While investigating the alleged scam, the names of 7,800 people came to light, whose marks were manipulated. We have prepared a list of all these people and it will be given to the state government. The marks of these candidates were allegedly tampered with in exchange of money,” said Amitabh Gupta, commissioner, Pune police speaking to the media on Friday (January 28).
Last December, the Pune police arrested Tukaram Supe, commissioner of the Maharashtra State Council of Examinations (MSCE), the Pune-based government body that conducts various scholastic exams including the TET, for alleged malpractices in TET 2020. Further investigations have since led to 12 persons being arrested. Sukhdev Dere, former MSCE commissioner during the 2018 TET and Saurabh Tripathi, director, Winner Software Pvt. Ltd, that conducted TET 2018 and TET 2021 are among those arrested. However, with the police continuing its investigations, the number of arrests is expected to go up.
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