PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on Monday ordered the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to probe the alleged leak of paper of entrance test for admission to the public and private sectors medical and dental colleges and also withheld the results.

The entrance test was held on Sunday that was conducted by Educational Testing and Evaluation Agency (Etea).

However, in the evening a video became viral on the social media regarding the paper leak a day before the entrance test. The person, whose face is not seen in the video, comments on the paper, saying it has been leaked a day before the test.

The decision to probe the alleged leakage of the paper was taken in a meeting held in the higher education department.

Results of test for admission to medical and dental colleges withheld

The meeting was attended by HED Special Secretary Manzoor Ahmed, Etea Managing Director Israr Ahmed, Khyber Medical University Vice-chancellor Prof Arshed Javaid and University of Engineering and Technology Vice-chancellor Prof Iftikhar Hussain.

After the meeting, the HED immediately prepared a summary in this regard to seek approval of Chief Minister Mahmood Khan. The department recommended in the summary that the issue of paper leak should be probed through Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) within three days, sources said.

They said that as it was a cyber crime and HED had no skills and expertise to probe it that’s why the department suggested that the issue should be probed through experts.

However, when the summary landed at the office of Chief Secretary Kamran Naveed Baloch, he replaced FIA with IB, saying FIA might not be able to probe it within three days. The chief minister agreed with the proposal of the chief secretary, sources said.

They said that according to initial information, the video became viral at 3pm while the entrance test concluded at 12:30pm.

However, they said, the possibility of accuracy in the video couldn’t be ruled out that’s why HED recommended probe into the issue.

An official of Etea said that invigilators at the examination centres in Kohat and Malakand recovered mobile phones from two candidates, who had taken snaps of the paper at 11:30am, an hour before ending time, and sent the same outside the hall through Whatsapp.

He said that FIR was registered against both the candidates.

“The leakage of the paper at a time when it is in progress has no impact on the students as we have four versions of the paper inside each examination hall,” he said.

The official said that it was impossible to dictate the correct answer of the multiple choice questions to candidate through mobile phone from outside the examination centre.

He said that despite strict body search of each candidate before entering the examination centre, the possibility of bringing mobile phone by candidates couldn’t be ruled out as thousands of them appeared in the test at each centre.

The official said that private coaching academies were involved in such tactics as they trained students and took pride in having the entrance test papers.

Regarding the video in which the reported leaked paper is shown, he said that according to the technical experts of ETEA the date shown in the video was tempered.

Sources said that according to initial results only two candidates scored 700 marks out of 800, which was a routine practice.

If the paper was leaked before test, a large number of candidates would have received 700 and above marks, they said.

In 2005, sources said, the Etea paper was leaked before test and 1,700 candidates had achieved 700 and above marks out of 800.

A total of 38,062 students including 23,460 boys and 14,602 girls appeared in the entrance test.

The test was held simultaneously at the seven examination centres established in different parts of the province including Islamia Collegiate School Ground Peshawar, Haripur University, Grassy Ground Saidu Sharif Swat, Gomal Medical College new building in Dera Ismail Khan, Abdul Wali Khan University Garden Campus Mardan, Cadet College Kohat and Malakand University in Lower Dir.

Published in Dawn, August 21st, 2018