The All India Bar Exam (AIBE) was cancelled mid-way yesterday at the exam centre in Jaipur, Rajasthan due to a shortage of around 900 question papers and was conducted incompletely, but not cancelled, at Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh’s centre where there were 300 papers too little.
The additional candidates at both venues were those who were not able to download a hall pass from the AIBE website, who were permitted to appear on the basis of an undertaking, as Legally India reported had happened in the Noida test centre yesterday.
After 1,600 candidates reached the Jyoti Rao Phoole College venue in Jaipur, where only 700 question papers were provided, the candidates started chanting slogans against the Bar Council of India (BCI), because of which the police was summoned to the venue.
Rajasthan state bar council (SBC) chairman, advocate Sanjay Sharma soon reached the centre and spoke to BCI chairman Manan Mishra, after which the exam was declared cancelled there.
Rajasthan’s SBC has allowed all 1,600 law graduates who were present at the centre to practice in courts pending the conduct of the next bar exam for them by the BCI.
The SBC has also constituted a three-member inquiry committee to submit a report about yesterday’s confusion to the BCI, according to the Times of India.
At Bhopal’s Career College, 1,200 candidates arrived at the venue where 923 were expected. No question papers were provided to the additional candidates, but photocopies of uniquely numbered Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets were distributed to them for the purpose of answering the exam.
This caused the candidates to create a ruckus at the other classrooms, tearing the answer sheets of other examinees and reportedly damaging the venue’s property. Some examinees with hall passes were forced to leave their halls without finishing answering the paper. After the police arrived at the centre the exam here was cancelled, reported Dainik Bhaskar.
A Bhopal candidate who had her hall pass and managed to finish answering the paper told Legally India that according to a local daily, the BCI has already rescheduled the exam for candidates from yesterday’s Bhopal centre, for 30 December. The venue for the rescheduled exam, however, would be in Jabalpur.
It is unclear whether candidates like her, who managed to finish answering the paper yesterday, are required to reappear in Jabalpur.
A candidate from Kolkata’s centre yesterday, told Legally India that the exam there was mostly conducted in a smooth way barring it starting around 15 minutes late. There was no confusion but when a regional law school student asked to be provided a question paper in the Bengali language, it was not available.
BCI chairman Mishra told Legally India: “Such a successful exam has never been held […] for 35,000 [candidates].” He declined to comment further after stating that Legally India’s coverage of the AIBE had been maligning the BCI.
Update: The BCI notified on its website today evening that the 4th AIBE conducted at Jaipur’s Jyoti Rao Phoole College yesterday stands cancelled, and that a date, time and venue for re-examination will be notified “soon”.
It also notified that those students who appeared at Bhopal’s Career College for the AIBE yesterday, but were not able to attempt the exam will be allowed to appear on a date which will be notified within 20 days.
In both notifications the BCI attributed the need for a re-exam to “some disturbance created by some unruly elements”. [Jaipur Notification/Bhopal Notification]
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