The results for the 14th Preliminary Examinations for the Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) were declared early in July. Soon after, complaints of irregularities, lack of transparency, and procedural lapses were highlighted by candidates, and small-scale protests started. The dissatisfaction was evident, and slowly, the candidates were turning vocal. They did not trust the examination process.
On July 21, a team of Jharkhand CID and Ranchi Police raided the office of the JPSC headquarters and the premises of a company named TDPL (TSR Data Processing Private Limited). Computers, hard disks, documents and other material were seized from both premises. JPSC Deputy Controller Shweta Gupta was arrested too. What followed next was a can of worms with so many red flags and shocking revelations; it sounds almost fictional.
On 22 July, the same day that the CID registered FIR No 16/2026 under relevant provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Jharkhand Competitive Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2023 in the JPSC paper leak case, a number of significant developments occurred. The CID team arrested Abhay Tiwari alias Manoj Tiwari. L Khiangte, the then chairman of the JPSC, resigned.
The anger of students and aspirants in the JPSC scam case has driven them to large-scale protests in Ranchi. While the state government has tried to pacify the angry protesters by agreeing to cancel the 14th JPSC Prelims exams, the student groups have refused to call of their hunger strike and agitation. They demand a thorough CBI probe into the JPSC’s workings and recruitment processes.
Examining available information on the case, it is staggering to think how such an operation carried on, involving so many government officials at so many levels and the sheer audacity of the accused to organise a syndicate so brazen, with zero regard for procedure and guidelines.
It is a textbook illustration of how bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption allow the infestation of multilayered networks of exam mafia and shady private firms wrapped like a parasite around the very machinery that is tasked with selecting the officers and staff for running the government.
What we see now is the ugly picture of structural flaws, unabashed corruption and rot that has metastasised into the very pillars of government that are supposed to remove it.
Let’s examine the developments and case details.
The anatomy of the JPSC scam
The JPSC scam is not a mere question paper leak, but a sophisticated, prolonged collusion that infected all levels of the government recruitment machinery. It was an end-to-end capture of the entire examination process.
TDPL, a Lucknow-based firm, was given the entire responsibility for the 14th JPSC examination and all associated cycles: candidate registration, biometrics, exam paper handling, Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) scanning, on-screen marking, data processing, and result generation.
Interestingly, the contract was given to TDPL not based on a tender process, but on ‘nomination’. Meaning, no other firm was considered; someone, or multiple someones, powerful enough made the JPSC hire TDPL without the basic safeguards of a competitive tender process or evaluation.
The JPSC itself has been facing allegations of massive irregularities in its selection process almost since its inception. Both the 1st and 2nd JPSC exams were marred by corruption, and CBI cases on the issues are ongoing. A total 11 major recruitment exams conducted by the JPSC are under investigation, and multiple former officers are facing allegations of corruption. CBI has filed a chargesheet and a supplementary chargesheet in these cases. The case is pending in the courts.
Abhay Tiwari, the prime accused, is currently working at the post of a Block Supply Officer in Godda. He reportedly has a ‘stellar record’ of clearing 12 government recruitment examinations, including multiple JPSC and JSSC tests, and is highlighted as the star example of the scam network’s reliability in delivering results. Target candidates are shown Tiwari’s success story to tell them how effective the network is.
Tiwari’s wife and some other close relatives are also government officers.
Here is how the network operated in Jharkhand:
- OMR sheet level at Prelims: Candidates were sometimes instructed to leave OMR sheets partially or fully blank. TDPL personnel later filled the correct answers. Answer keys were allegedly shared with TDPL staff via WhatsApp weeks before official results. The price for this level was 5-6 Lakhs for General Category and 2-3 lakhs for Reserved Categories.
- Mains exams level: The network’s paid customers were privided special rented flats arranged by TDPL for writing answers that were dictated to them by ‘experts’. This ‘expert’ service was professional. Professors from multiple states were brought to dictate answers. For coveted government posts like FRO(Forest Range Officer) and ACF (Assistant Conservator of Forests) exams, the price for candidates at this level was around Rs 40 lakhs.
- Interview level: A more sophisticated and better-equipped service worked at the final interview stage. Candidates who paid the necessary amount, allegedly at around Rs 55 lakhs for this level, had their names routed to a close circle of JPSC senior officials and interview board codes were decoded a day in advance. Candidates who paid TDPL network, were put in ‘freindly’ boards where they were asked ‘friendly’ questions and their marks were elevated.
The comprehensive package for ‘special service’ clearing all levels was priced at around 70 lakhs, including Rs 15 lakhs for just the interview-stage boost.
As per reports, Tiwari has told CID during the investigation that he has collected ₹5.8 crore from around 20 candidates seeking FRO and ACF posts. A separate deal was made on behalf of TDPL with the JPSC for ‘nominating’ the firm for the examination process.
Basically, the entire network operated on a 3-layered structure. JPSC senior officials who were the ‘insiders’, TDPL, which manipulated the exam and the entire selection process, and middlemen who sought candidates who were desperate enough and willing to pay enough for a government job and connected them to TDPL.
Arrests made so far
A total of 19-20 persons have been arrested by the CID so far in the case. The main names are as followed.
Abhay Kumar Tiwari (alleged operational mastermind), arrested on July 22
L. Khiangte, former JPSC Chairman and retired Chief Secretary of Jharkhand, arrested 10 August after multiple rounds of questioning
Shweta Kumari Gupta, Deputy Controller of Examinations, JPSC, was arrested on July 22
TDPL directors Ramveer (Rambir) Singh and Satyapal Singh, Arrested on July 22
Several TDPL technical and operational staff (Mohammad Usman, Mohammad Ebad, Hemant Verma, and others)
JPSC staff including Sonu Kumar, Manoj Tirkey and Dharmendra Kumar (computer operator linked to the Chairman’s office)
Some other associated individuals and several other JPSC officials and staff are also under interrogation, yet to be formally arrested
A broader scrutiny also includes several hundred candidates who have not submitted copies of their OMR, some family members of accused who obtained government jobs and have been found with properties and cash recoveries inconsistent with known income sources.
The audacity of corruption
The case details are only the tip of the iceberg. One may ask: there are so many paper leaks and cases of malpractice regularly in the news. Why is this one so special? The answer is. The sheer audacity of the corruption in this case.
There are a number of red flags that have been ignored or deliberately overridden at all levels of the state government.
TDPL was blacklisted in UP
In 2021, TDPL’s directors were arrested over recruitment irregularities. Satya Pal Singh and Ram Beer Singh (both arrested again by the CID now) were arrested by a UP Police SIT in April 2021 for alleged irregularities in the 2018–19 Village Development Officers (VDO) recruitment. TDPL was also linked to other UP recruitment processes, including legislative secretariat posts for which the Allahabad High Court had slammed the UP government earlier, asking it never to hire TDPL them again, and the firm was already under probe by CBI over related cases.
However, if one thinks maybe the TDPL directors managed to fool some officials in Jharkhand and hid their criminal history in UP, they are mistaken.
The most glaring aspect of the whole scam is that in Jharkhand itself, the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC), had blacklisted the same TDPL in 2025 for three years.
The reason for the blacklisting was gross non-compliance, misconduct, and failure to meet the terms and conditions of the tender for the Combined Graduate Level (CGL) examination held in September 2024. JSSC had also delisted TDPL from all exam-related work.
Despite all of that, TDPL was awarded the end-to-end contract for all exam-related work by the JPSC, for several government recruitment exams.
Yes. You read that right. The JPSC, which handles recruitment for higher-level gazetted posts than the JSSC, hired a corrupt, already blacklisted firm for end-to-end examination handling, without a due tender process or evaluation. Reports say the price for that bit of brazen, on-your-face thuggery was Rs 2 crores, not including the 20% commission in the earnings made from each candidate. In the recent past, JPSC has conducted exams for high-level posts like FRO, ACF, CDPO, APP and others.
The Controller of Examinations has stated that no background checks were done on TDPL and the contract was handed out solely because the firm was ‘nominated’.
Another surprising fact is that the same person, Abhay Tiwari, the main accused who was flaunted as the ’success story’ of the network, as listed as ‘Manoj Tiwari’ by TDPL, as their ‘Marketing Manager’. So an obvious case of identity forgery was also overlooked by the system.
The bigger picture: Sarkari Naukri (Government job) syndrome of the Indian society
Why are such scandals so prevalent in our country? Why does almost every major government exam face allegations of corruption and irregularities? Why has even the UPSC, the highest dream of every ‘govt job’ aspirant, also been marred by allegations of irregularities and lapses in the recruitment process, for example, the case of Puja Khedkar?
The JPSC scam case, and every other paper leak scam we see are manifestations of a national pathology. The Sarkari Naukri syndrome.
Every year, millions of young Indians are graduating from colleges all over the country with degrees in subjects like Political Science, Sociology, History, Literature and others. Beyond higher academia, teaching and a very narrow band of policy or NGO roles, these subjects have negligible real-life usage or ability to meet private sector skill demand.
The private sector demands technical knowledge, domain expertise, digital and vocational skills. The India Skills Report 2026 says overall graduate employability in India has risen to 56.35%, from 54.81% in 2025. However, employers are looking for talent in skills like AI, Machine Learning, and new-age tech. Most of those jobs are for Computer and IT engineers. The demand for MBA has also dipped slightly, while ITI and Polytechnic graduates show employability at 45.95% and 32.92%, respectively.
Another part of the report also highlights that 72% of undergraduate and 58% of Business School curricula are misaligned with industry needs.
Now factor this in for the plain graduates passing from thousands of Arts colleges that have spawned across the country. What are their employment prospects in a world that is increasingly moving towards automation and advanced engineering? For millions of BA graduates from ordinary institutions, the private job market can at best offer low-skill, insecure, or poorly paid work. Most of these graduates, for that matter, even BSc and BCom graduates, are obtaining their degrees not because they love those subjects or want to pursue them at higher levels, but as a mere eligibility criterion for that same thing: Sarkari Naukri.
For most Indian families, a ’Sarkari Naukri’, (government job) is the only ticket to a better life. In smaller towns and lower middle class families, the ‘Sarkari Naukri’ carries a cultural weight, a social legitimacy that can never be fulfilled by a private sector job. It is not just the lack of employment opportunities in the private sector. There is this whole cult built around Sarkari Naukri in Indian society. The Sarkari Naukri can guarantee instant respect in the extended family; it brings big earnings and status; it guarantees excellent prospects in the arranged marriage market, and let’s be honest here, also guarantees a fat dowry for the groom.
The reels shared by some top officers and their fan base, showing how their ‘Sarkari Naukri’ means escort vehicles, guards and a red carpet anywhere they go, tells the story by itself.
But all that glory, the grand prize of the Sarkari Naukri, is also extremely rare. The jobs are few, and the success rate is often below 1%.
The toxic loop that feeds itself
This scarcity feeds the parallel industries of coaching centres, which run massive body shops built around this single dream. Year after year, millions of graduates jump into the rat race and spend the best part of their youth chasing this dream, writing one exam after another, attempt after attempt till they reach the maximum age limit.
The coaching ecosystem is the legal arm of the parallel industries, estimated at over 58,000 crores. The illegal arm is the mafia. The shady world of middlemen, dealers, corrupt officials and their contacts, who organise paper leaks, OMR manipulation, interview fixing, and selection packages priced from a few lakhs to ₹60–70 lakh, as seen in the JPSC case.
The loop isn’t complete yet. There is politics. Politicians keep opening college after college, boasting college opening as success in their ledger. The politics also needs to keep moving the ‘reservation’ wheel to appease their voters. Government jobs are the whole point of caste-based reservation, so the loop must continue, because it sustains the politics.
But nobody pauses to think how students of those colleges will be employed. Sure, the government machinery needs staffing. There will be thousands of jobs in police, railways, administrative offices at the central and state level and such. But no amount of those offices is enough to absorb the sheer number of graduates produced every year, especially graduates who are already afflicted with the ‘Sarkari Naukri’ syndrome and who think private sector employment or small-level entrepreneurship are beneath them.
This loop is fed with toxic expectations of the families, corrupt officials and paper leak mafia, coaching mafia and the whole political ecosystem, generation after generation, that believes in quick fixes rather than long-term solutions.
Periodic recruitment drives and occasional CBI probes keep only addressing the symptoms, but the disease remains. Structural solutions, like a radical and overhauling improvement in the quality and relevance of undergraduate education, expansion of quality formal private employment, genuine skill development at scale, and reduction of the outsized premium attached to government jobs, remain elusive.
Above all of this, the whole system of the country has been adapted to running in such a manner that the ‘Sarkari Naukri’ also comes with the unspoken ultimate gift: lack of accountability. Government officials are suspended or transferred; the most corrupt ones get away with a slight slap on the wrist, and can continue to be corrupt. Instances of ‘Sarkari’ babu being held accountable are rare, instances of them being fired, are rarer still.
The loop keeps self-reinforcing.
Skill-mismatched graduates enter the job market in millions. Limited private-sector absorption and the ’Sarkari Naukri’ craze push them toward government recruitment exams. Extreme competition sustains a massive coaching industry that keeps reselling hope in a market of despair and creates profitable opportunities for leak and manipulation networks. Each exposed scam further erodes trust, lengthens preparation cycles, and increases willingness to pay for illegal advantages. Then another cohort of graduates arrives the following year, and the cycle repeats, year after year, generation after generation.
What the JPSC scam has unearthed so far is neither unheard of, nor is it the first of its kind. It is just another ugly metastasisation of the same cancer that continues to afflict our country.
