Patna: Hundreds of candidates seeking appointment as assistant engineers staged a protest in Patna on Monday, alleging serious irregularities in a recruitment process conducted by the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC). Demonstrators gathered outside Visvesvaraya Bhavan, raising slogans and demanding what they described as a fair and merit-based selection procedure.
The protesters, all of whom appeared for the BPSC assistant engineer examination, accused the authorities of sidelining fresh graduates in favour of contractual employees. According to several candidates, contractual staff are being selected across multiple departments simultaneously, while new aspirants struggle to secure employment despite qualifying in the written examination.
Pushkar Raj, one of the candidates participating in the protest, said the recruitment process appeared to systematically disadvantage freshers. “Contractual employees are being prioritised everywhere, while those who prepared and cleared the exam are being ignored,” he said.
Others echoed similar concerns, arguing that the design of the selection process effectively guarantees the appointment of contractual employees. Shivam Kumar, another protester, said candidates who invested years of preparation were being denied a fair opportunity. “Our hard work and merit have no value in this system,” he said.
Central to the protest are allegations that the rules governing experience-based weightage have been altered. Candidates said that under the original provisions, contractual employees were to receive additional marks for experience — five marks for each year of service, up to a maximum of 25 marks — added directly to their score.
However, protesters alleged that this system has been replaced with a percentage-based weightage, granting contractual employees a 25% advantage. In a 400-mark examination, they claim, this translates to an additional 133 marks, significantly skewing the merit list.
The demonstrators warned that such changes undermine transparency and fairness in public recruitment, and called on the authorities to review the process. At the time of writing, the BPSC had not publicly responded to the allegations.
