Candidates protest outside the JPSC building on Wednesday. Picture by Prashant Mitra

Ranchi, Jan. 19: Hundreds of civil service aspirants today descended on the streets and blocked the busy Circular Road in protest against the delay in receiving admit cards for the preliminary test to be conducted by the Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) on Sunday.

The agitation in front of the JPSC office threw traffic out of gear for one and a half hour. The candidates — some of them wielding iron rods and torches — also reportedly had a scuffle with the commuters when the latter asked them to clear the road. A reporter was reportedly manhandled too.

The situation came under control around 1pm only after deputy superintendent of police Anuranjan Kispotta rushed to the spot. A riot control vehicle and Naxal Counter Force of the district police were also deployed.

According to sources, the protesters arrived in front of JPSC office around 11.30am and started shouting slogans against the authorities for the glitches they were facing while downloading admit cards from the JPSC website. They also tried to damage the counters at the JPSC office. Thereafter, they fanned out on Circular Road and held up traffic.

More than one lakh candidates have filled up forms to appear for the preliminary test of the state civil service examination scheduled on January 23. However, sources said, only about 5,000 have got admit cards till now, thanks to a technical snag on the JPSC website.

One of the agitators, Prem Shanker Singh, a student from Dhanbad, said: “The examination is just three days away, but we are yet to receive admit cards. Neither the JPSC website nor its employees are working properly. No one is co-operating with us,” Singh alleged while several others agreed.

The students were so angry that some of them even turned against the reporters who had gone to cover the protest.

A reporter of a TV channel even lodged an FIR at the Kotwali police station, accusing a student of Gaya of roughing him up. However, by the time police arrived to arrest him, the student had fled.

Acting JPSC chairman R.C. Kaithal admitted that the aspirants were facing problem in getting admit cards, but added they were trying their best to ensure proper functioning of the website.

“We have a lease line connection of just 128 kilobyte per second. Hence, data flow is very slow. Besides, with thousands of students trying to access the site, the system is hanging. We have applied for a lease line connection of 2GB per second. We were supposed to get the new connection by last evening but that did not happen. Efforts are on to procure the connection,” he said.