Rahul visits ‘paper leak’ protest site in Patna, assures support to job aspirants

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday threw his weight behind the protests against alleged irregularities in BPSC exams by visiting the site of the nearly a month-old agitation here and spending several minutes with aggrieved students.

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After Rahul winded up his pre-decided engagements, during which he also made a veiled reference to the protests with the remark “Bihar has been converted into a centre of paper leaks”, a delegation of students called on him at a hotel.

The delegation urged him to visit Gardani Bagh where several aspirants have been on a round-the-clock protest seeking cancellation of Combined Competitive Exam held last month.

Suman Saurabh, a student from Sitamarhi, who was part of the delegation, said, “We urged Rahul Gandhi to visit Gardani Bagh which is our ‘dharmabhoomi’ and ‘karmabhoomi’. He said he will take some time off. As the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, he is known to the entire nation and his support means a lot to us.”

Rahul squatted in the midst of young men and women who have been carrying on their ‘dharna’ under a makeshift tent. He was seen patiently listening to the candidates who raised slogans “We want a re-exam” and also highlighted their anguish over the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar failing to give them a hearing.” Rahul later came out with a strongly worded statement, on his X handle, voicing support for the protesting students.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi claims Bihar is being propelled forward by a double engine. But it is, in fact, a failed engine running over the dreams of poor, hard-working students”, he wrote in Hindi. He also urged the Bihar Chief Minister to meet the protesting students and “give a serious thought to their demands” and warned, using the imagery of Mahabharata “today’s Eklavya cannot be made to cut off his own thumb”. Notably, over four lakh candidates had appeared for the exams at more than 900 centres across the state on December 13 when hundreds boycotted the test alleging that question papers had been leaked.

The BPSC denied the allegations but ordered re-examination for more than 12,000 candidates who had been assigned Bapu Pariksha Parisar in the city, evoking resentment among other aspirants who have contended that they were being deprived of a “level playing field”.