Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) chairperson Amitabh Chaudhary agreed to release cut-off marks for the recently held preliminary exams and assured an internal probe into concerns raised by aspirants after a delegation of student representatives and legislators met him here on Tuesday following day-long protests that led to police action.

BJP MLA from Bhawanathpur Bhanu Pratap Shahi, who was lathi-charged along with protesting candidates at Morhabadi prior to his meeting with Chaudhary, said the JPSC chairperson assured them that their grievances of anomalies in the system would be looked into.

“JPSC has agreed to release marks of all the candidates in order to ensure transparency in the process. They could have agreed to have a dialogue before the police lathi-charged us,” Shahi said about the events preceding the meeting.

Earlier, the protesting JPSC aspirants and Shahi were lathi-charged by police at Morhabadi while they were marching towards the JPSC building for a dialogue with the chairman over alleged anomalies in the recently conducted exams.

“They caught a public representative by his caller and manhandled him,” said Shahi.

Several thousand JPSC aspirants have been demanding cancellation of the recently conducted preliminary tests for JPSC 7 to 10 alleging favouritism and anomalies in the system. The students have alleged that the JPSC has not issued a cut-off for the recently held exams, and demanded reexamination.

The protesters have alleged that several aspirants whose roll numbers fell in sequence cleared the tests, while no aspirant under the specially-abled category made it to the list of successful candidates. Besides, some aspirants did not clear the exam despite scoring more than other candidates who cleared the test, the aspirants said.

The ongoing protests by JPSC aspirants has gained political attention lately, with BJP and AJSU-Party legislators extending their support to the protesting students. The ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) has accused the BJP of orchestrating protests by students for political gains.

BJP legislator Naveen Jaiswal, who also attended the meeting with the JPSC chairperson on Tuesday, said the state government should at least hold a dialogue with students and listen to their concerns. “Such anomalies were expected the moment relatives and friends of JMM and Congress leaders were given power in the JPSC. This is clearly an attempt by the government to sell JPSC seats and encourage favouritism,” he alleged.

JPSC exams have been riddled with controversies since 2016. The prelims test for JPSC 6 was conducted way back on December 18, 2016 and its result was declared in February 2017. On June 7, 2021, The Jharkhand High Court cancelled the merit list of the 6th JPSC after years of protests by aspirants. The court also directed the state government to identify the officials responsible for the mistake in the merit list and take action against them.