Jamshedpur, Aug. 22: The Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) has decided to conduct a re-examination of the optional paper for the recently-held civil services examination at the three centres in the city — the Graduate School College for Women, Jamshedpur Co-operative College and the Bharat Sevashram School.

The shortage of question papers had led to the cancellation of the optional papers at these three centres, which forced examinees to protest during the maiden JPSC preliminary examination on August 17. Following the chaos, deputy commissioner Nidhi Khare had sent a report to the commission recommending re-examination in these three centres for the optional papers.

A member of the commission, D.K. Prasad, while speaking to The Telegraph, said a decision to conduct the re-examination has been taken by the commission and a notification for a fresh re-examination date will be announced soon.

According to Prasad, the decision for re-examination was taken after going through the report submitted by Khare. However, the commission was yet to receive a report from Computer Maintenance Corporation, the agency hired by the commission to hold the examination, he said.

“We have asked CMC, which was entrusted with the job of preparing the question papers, to submit a report why there was a shortage of question papers for the optional subjects. They are yet to reply,” said Prasad, adding that it was the responsibility of the agency to check that the packets had the requisite number of question papers.

There was a shortage of nearly 448 question papers in different optional subjects in these three centres and a large number of candidates could not appear for the examination in the second sitting. In the Graduate School College for Women, about 700 examinees refused to sit for the examination, as the question papers failed to arrive even after an hour of the scheduled examination time.

JPSC officials said the examinees were not at fault and re-examination is the only solution. According to them, it is a common practise for any competitive examination that extra question papers are kept in the treasury to meet any eventuality. But CMC had failed to give extra question papers which led to chaos and confusion during the examination, they said.