Telangana for Eamcet 3

Hyderabad: With Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao inclined towards cancelling of the Eamcet-II entrance examination, the Telangana government on Friday referred the issue to the Law department for taking a final decision.

The Chief Minister, who held a meeting with inquiry officials of the Crime Investigation Department, Health and Education departments, reviewed the progress in the paper leak case. He discussed the pros and cons of cancellation of the examination, legal hurdles and the possibility of conducting the examination afresh.

KCR waives fee for third bout; free transport to exam centres

The role of the state government, universities and previous court judgments was also discussed at length during the meeting. Officials suggested to the Chief Minister that the government would face major legal hurdles if any of the candidates approached the courts challenging the admissions done on the ranks secured in Eamcet-II.

“After taking stock of the situation, KCR was reportedly inclined towards conducting the exam afresh,” a source said. A formal decision on the issue is likely to be made on Monday, the source added.

The Chief Minister also discussed ways to conduct the exam without collecting fees from the students again and offer free transportation to students on the day of the examination.

He instructed investigating officials to register cases against all those responsible, including parents who encouraged their children to opt for the wrong path to gain admissions in to medical education.

The CID officials informed the Chief Minister that all the accused in the case would be arrested in the next 48 hours.

Asking the officials to take foolproof arrangements, KCR told them to study the possibility of conducting the entrance examination online, similar to the method adopted by JEE, GMAT and GRE exams.

The Government is exploring options to conduct the entrance exam in August third week. Meanwhile, the Crime Investigation Department police on Friday made steady progress in the Eamcet II examination paper leakage scam with the arrest of a mediator Shaik Ramesh alias Raheem from Boduppal and recovered Rs 37.5 lakh from him.

The arrest of Shaik Ramesh (52) follows the arrest of Thirumal Rao and Vishnudhar on Thursday. Ramesh, a native of Prakasam district in Andhra Pradesh, has mediated with the parents of 14 students to pay about Rs 12.5 lakh to give the Eamcet II paper to their wards.

“This broker (Ramesh) contacted 14 students from various places in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to pay money in order to leak the exam paper. As the students’ parents accepted, Ramesh took the students to Pune camp, where they were given practice with leaked TS Eamcet-II-2016 (medical) question papers,” said CID Additional DG Satyanarain.

The CID chief said, “So far Ramesh collected Rs 1.73 crore from parents of 14 students. He paid Rs 1.2 crore of this money to another broker, who took students to the camp for practice. Ramesh also deposited Rs 15 lakh in the bank account of one of his friends.”

The teams seized Rs 37.5 lakh from his possession. Efforts are going on to apprehend the other brokers and kingpins of the question paper leakage, said the additional DG.

Director General of Police Anurag Sharma had earlier ordered an enquiry into the allegations of leakage of Eamcet-II question paper. The CID sleuths on Thursday had said that two sets of question papers were leaked to about 130 students in both the Telugu states.

The mediators have contacted the parents of the students and took the students to Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune and some at Hyderabad to practice the leaked paper for two days.