“….Let me know who does not cheat a bit to pass an exam? Everyone does some cheating to pass their exams during…”, Believe it or not, these were the statements of ex-Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav, to support the culture of cheating in Uttar Pradesh (UP), which his family and party nurtured institutionally.
Legitimising Cheating
Before Yogi Adityanath became the Chief Minister of UP, mass institutionalised cheating by students to pass their board exams was rampant in the State. Akhilesh Yadav and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav would openly promote cheating culture among students. Akhilesh Yadav, on multiple occasions in his speeches and interviews, shockingly endorsed cheating and stated that even he cheated during his school days and cheating to pass the exam is totally legitimate. Akhilesh Yadav has learnt this cheating philosophy from his father Mulayam Singh Yadav, who as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1993, abolished the Anti-Copying Act introduced by the previous Bharatiya Janata Party Government of Kalyan Singh.
Announcing Shameless Act
In the 1993 UP elections, Mulayam Singh Yadav openly campaigned that the first thing he would do, if he won, was to repeal the Anti-Copying Law. He did this in mere 30 minutes after swearing in, and he proudly announced this shameless act. No one from the so-called intellectual class said anything against it when the campaign was going on. And no one from the same class condemned this first act of Mulayam. The class knew how it was hurting the youngsters in UP, but that was no concern for them, because they thought they could fire their guns against Hindutva using Mulayam’s shoulders.
Uttar Pradesh got a bad name and reputation due to this rampant cheating culture promoted by Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav. Candidates, who had studied in Uttar Pradesh, got lower preference in jobs across India owing to this cheating tag.
When Yogi Adityanath came to power, there was a well-oiled cheating mafia working in the State, which used to take money from candidates and help them pass the board exams. The State Government cracked down heavily on the cheating mafia in the State. At the start of his CM term, after several meetings with the education department officials, Yogi Government developed a strategy and a framework for cheating-free examinations by 2018.
No one from the intellectual class condemned this first act of Mulayam. The class knew how it was hurting youngsters in UP, but they thought they could fire their guns against Hindutva using Mulayam’s shoulders
The first step was to eliminate bogus examination centres, which were the fulcrum of mass cheating rackets. Instead of manual allotment, schools were asked to apply online if they wanted exams to be conducted on their premises. Earlier, schools with literally no infrastructure would also conduct examinations. Strict norms were set for a school to be an eligible exam centre – they were required to have CCTV installation in each class, a boundary wall around the school campus, and no hostels or teachers’ residences within the school compound. First, only those schools were shortlisted and GPS marked who fulfilled all these requirements, and then a team comprising the District Magistrate, the District Education Inspector and other officers, visited all the schools selected online for the final approval. No persuasion from local leaders and MLAs was entertained. As a result, in 2018, for more than 66 lakh students, only 8,549 centres were approved compared to 11,415 centres for 55 lakh students in 2017.
Yogi Government targeted those who facilitate cheating rather than students and teachers.
Tackling Menace of Cheating
After meticulously selecting the exam centres, the State Government made a plan to tackle four different ways of cheating in examinations.
First is the ‘Solver method’ of cheating. In the Solver method, a different person appears in place of the real candidate and writes the answers. To tackle this kind of cheating, Yogi Government verified all the admit cards of the students through Adhaar-linking. Many solvers who were impersonating the real candidate, were arrested during checking.
Second prevalent method of cheating in UP was ‘Leaking the Question Papers’. This was rampant in UP in the past. To avoid this, Yogi Government prepared three sets of question papers from the beginning, and the movement of question papers was tracked through GPS. Whenever there was news of question paper leakage, the people concerned were arrested. Even after tight vigilance, some papers got leaked. When Samajwadi Party was governing the State, there were multiple paper leaks. However, the Government used to suppress the news, continuing with the same compromised exams as they were hand and glove with the cheating mafia. Any such exam was halted in those times, only by the intervention of the courts, when any exam applicant raised the issue with the courts. But in the Yogi Government even on the slightest proof of exam papers being compromised, exams were cancelled in the interest of hard-working students.
Third common method of cheating was ‘Swapping of Answer Sheets’, where back pages of answer sheets were exchanged between a student, who had done well with another student, favouring the latter. In this vicious cheating method, the students performing well ended up losing their marks in the process. To tackle this, Yogi Government assigned special codes to each answer sheet. This made adding and attaching any page at a later stage impossible.
The fourth and one of the most common methods of cheating in rural areas was that ‘One Person would Narrate’ the answer to a class or a group of students, in connivance with the centre in-charge. For this, Yogi Government issued special identity cards to all the invigilators for the examination. Moreover, CCTV cameras monitored through a centralised control room helped to track the activities in the examination rooms.
Fearing the strong anti-cheating measures taken by the Yogi Government, around 10.56 lakh students dropped out from the board exams in 2018. In an Akhilesh Government, these lakhs of under-learnt students would have added to society and work-force with the ethos of earning their success in life through cheating, forgery and vicious tricks. In contrast, CM Yogi Adityanath, who was determined to nurture merit among the students in the State, launched Abhyudaya scheme to offer free coaching centre for competitive examinations – IAS, IPS, PCS, NDS, CDS, NEET and JEE – to all such students, who want to prepare for these exams but are unable to do due to their financial status.
We see this cheating behaviour in their personal lives also. Akhilesh Yadav mentions on his personal website that he has a Masters degree from Sydney, Australia, but in his election papers he skips this detail, as he did not complete his final dissertation in Australia and came back without a degree. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s and Lalu Prasad Yadav’s families are related to each other and so is their conduct. Misa Bharati, daughter of Lalu Prasad Yadav, never cracked any medical entrance exam. But being a Chief Minister’s daughter, she got an employee quota seat in the prestigious Tata Medical College in Jamshedpur – though her parents were never employees of Tata Steel or Tata Motors. Then they conveniently shifted her to Patna Medical College on the grounds of security concerns for a CM’s daughter. And then it seems she topped her college with distinction, when her mother was Chief Minister of the State. Misa Bharati never practised medicine for a day in her life, as narrated by Mrityunjay Sharma in his book Broken Promises.
It’s ironic that today when the Central Government and State Government in Uttar Pradesh are trying to conduct zero-error exams in the State, founders of the cheating culture in the country are crying the loudest.
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