The bill, titled 'Maharashtra Competitive Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024', was tabled by Minister Shambhuraj Desai in the lower House of the state legislature.

Mumbai: Amid concerns over exam paper leaks, the Maharashtra government on Friday tabled a bill in the state legislative assembly that aims to prevent malpractices in competitive examinations.

About The Bill

The bill, titled 'Maharashtra Competitive Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024', was tabled by Minister Shambhuraj Desai in the lower House of the state legislature. Under the bill, the offences related to the conduct of competitive examinations shall be cognisable, non-bailable and non-compoundable.

The objective of the bill is to bring greater transparency, fairness and credibility to the competitive examination system and to ensure the youth that their sincere and genuine efforts will be fairly rewarded. The bill is aimed at effectively and legally deterring persons, organised groups or institutions that indulge in various unfair means and adversely impact the competitive examination system for monetary or wrongful gains.

Salient Features Of The Bill

The salient features of the bill include making provisions to avoid disruption in the conduct of competitive exams, mandates it to specify duties of paper setters, to empowering the officers not below the rank of deputy superintendent of police or assistant commissioner of police to investigate the offence.

The service provider, who is engaged by the competitive examination authorities for the conduct of the exam, will be liable to be punished with a fine up to Rs 1 crore and the proportionate cost of examination shall be recovered from such provider. It shall also be barred from being assigned with any such responsibility of conducting any competitive exam for four years, the bill says.

No action will be taken against a person who committed the offence without his knowledge and he has done all due diligence to prevent the commission of such an offence.

According to the bill, those found indulging in unfair means and offences in the conduct of competitive examinations shall be imprisoned for a term not less than three years, which may be extended to five years, and with a fine of up to Rs 10 lakh. In case of default of payment of fine, an additional punishment of imprisonment shall be imposed as per provisions of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023.

According to the bill, property shall be subjected to attachment and forfeiture and the proportionate cost of the examination shall also be recovered from it.

At Present, there is no specific substantive law to deal with unfair means adopted or offences committed by various entities involved in competitive examinations. Therefore, it is imperative that the elements that exploit vulnerabilities of the examination system are identified and effectively dealt with by comprehensive state legislation.