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By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

TET postponed after paper leak, three held

Mumbai: In another shocker, the Maharashtra Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) question paper has ‘leaked’ - barely 24 hours before the scheduled examination on Sunday - jeopardising the future of thousands aspiring to join the noble profession of teaching, officials said here. Reacting quickly, the Maharashtra State Council of Examination cancelled Sunday’s paper scheduled to be held simultaneously at 1,028 centres across the state and said that the new date will be announced early next week. As...

TET postponed after paper leak, three held

Mumbai: In another shocker, the Maharashtra Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) question paper has ‘leaked’ - barely 24 hours before the scheduled examination on Sunday - jeopardising the future of thousands aspiring to join the noble profession of teaching, officials said here. Reacting quickly, the Maharashtra State Council of Examination cancelled Sunday’s paper scheduled to be held simultaneously at 1,028 centres across the state and said that the new date will be announced early next week. As many as six lakh candidates were scheduled to appear for the examination across 1,728 centres at 37 locations, officials said. The paper leak was detected and verified swiftly by Bhiwandi Police in Thane district which has arrested three alleged suspected, two from Bihar and one from Haryana, who were planning to hawk it for a staggering sum of Rs. 1.50 crore, suggesting the involvement of an inter-state gang behind the incident. Giving details, the Bhiwandi Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Dudhe said that the question paper was allegedly being ‘sold’ for a staggering Rs 1.50 crore, indicating a well-organised racket transcending the state border. He said that early on Saturday, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP-II) Dr. Pawan Bansod received a confidential tip-off and he immediately alerted senior officials who launched a discreet operation to track and apprehend the culprits. “An informant tipped us that the accused were travelling from New Delhi to Mumbai carrying copies of the TET question papers. After verification, we laid a trap and arrested the three suspects in Bhiwandi. However, the kingpin/s behind the racket remain absconding,” Dudhe said. Police said that the papers were to be sold for Rs 1.50 crore for which advance was reportedly collected from some persons. The arrested accused are: Rajiv Shah, 45 and Akash Kumar, 30, both of Patna in Bihar and Dheeraj Kumar, 28, of Panipat in Haryana. Four Sets Official sources said that the police sleuths accosted the suspected trio in a local hotel room where they were staying, questioned and searched them. They recovered four sets of purported copies of the crucial TET paper from them. Upon sustained questioning they admitted that these were the copies of the TET examination question paper of June 28. Experts from the MSCE were immediately summoned to confirm the documents recovered and the officials confirmed that many of the questions apparently were similar to those in the official TET exam paper of Sunday. Armed with the information, the Kongaon Police Station in Bhiwandi initially detained the trio, filed a case and then placed them under arrest. They are slapped with charges under the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita Sections 318(4), 316(5) and 61(2), besides stringent sections of the Maharashtra Examination Act, 2024, said Senior Police Inspector (HQ) Shailesh Salvi. As news of the paper leak spread like wildfire, thousands of candidates vent their ire before the mediapersons and on social media, demanding an overhaul of the public examinations monitoring systems and stringent punishment to the accused. SIT Formed The Thane Police have formed a 9-member SIT comprising Dr. Bansod, Sachin Sangle, Dr. Vinay Marathe and other officers, to investigate the source of the leak, identify the masterminds, and determine whether the network was linked with similar examination scams across the country. The TET paper leak comes days after the nationwide furore over the NEET 2026 exam paper leak with questions raised on the country’s public examinations system amid claims and assurances of tight security and monitoring. Congress, CJP flay govt Maharashtra Congress President Harshwardhan Sapkal and Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke pounced on the state government, accusing it of failing to safeguard the future of thousands of deserving candidates. They demanded a thorough probe and stringent action against everyone involved, lamenting how a series of examination scandals have damaged the credibility of the state’s education and public exams systems. “The government is not bothered. They are busy with breaking political parties. The so-called double-engine regime is to be blamed for the ‘double-leaks’ in such a short time. The education minister must resign,” demanded Dipke. The examination system has come under a cloud with several entrance and recruitment exams, including the NEET, UGC-NET, the Maharashtra TET and others cancelled or being probed in the past three years, triggering huge public outrage and raising question marks on the careers of lakhs of candidates.

From Waste to Dignity

Last week's article highlighted how exclusionary policies continue to undermine the livelihoods of waste pickers despite their vital contribution to urban waste management. Yet, there are also inspiring examples of how waste pickers have organised to secure recognition, protect their rights, and transform public perceptions. One of the earliest and most influential is the Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP).


Exclusion Costs

In 2019, the Bengaluru city administration expanded private contracting arrangements in the city's waste management sector. This reportedly deprived thousands of waste pickers of access to neighbourhoods where they had traditionally collected recyclable waste.


An estimated 8,000 waste pickers found their livelihoods severely affected after contractors restricted their entry into these localities. Many were pushed into greater economic insecurity despite having played a crucial role in the city's recycling ecosystem for years.


In Hyderabad, the 2021 municipal tender mandated door-to-door collection by mechanised vehicles. This effectively criminalised the manual collection that waste pickers had carried out for decades.


Such exclusionary practices not only threaten the survival of vulnerable workers. They also contradict the objectives of the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, which explicitly call for the integration and formal recognition of waste pickers within municipal waste management systems.


Rather than treating waste pickers as competitors to modern waste management, municipalities should recognise them as indispensable environmental service providers. Integrating informal workers into formal collection systems through cooperatives, service contracts, and social protection measures would promote both environmental sustainability and social justice. It would also ensure that the transition to a circular economy does not come at the expense of those whose labour has long sustained urban recycling.


However, such integration and inclusion require legal mandates, enforcement mechanisms, and financial resources directed towards cooperatives rather than corporations.


Fortunately, there are successful examples that demonstrate how recognising and organising waste pickers benefits not only the workers themselves but also cities, citizens, and the environment. One such example is KKPKP, a pioneering movement that has inspired similar initiatives across India.


KKPKP: Collective Courage

In the early 1990s, waste pickers in the Pimpri-Chinchwad area, just like their counterparts in many other cities and towns, faced severe social stigma and were often treated with disrespect because of the work they did. Yet, they were not collecting waste because they chose a life among garbage. They were earning a livelihood by recovering valuable recyclable materials that had supported their families for generations.


A turning point came in 1993, when many waste pickers gathered to share their experiences, hardships, and frustrations. For the first time, they spoke openly about their anger and the injustice of being treated as invisible human beings. They realised that their strength lay not in standing alone but in standing together.


That gathering became a turning point. It was the moment when they decided to reclaim their dignity, assert their rights, and walk a new path with confidence and self-respect. The meeting gave them the confidence to unite, organise, and fight for dignity and recognition. Out of this collective awakening was born the Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP)—a cooperative movement built by waste pickers themselves.


The members of KKPKP are not merely people who collect waste. They are self-employed environmental workers whose efforts help keep cities cleaner, reduce landfill waste, and return valuable materials to the economy.


Their journey is not only a story of waste management. It is also a story of courage, unity, dignity, and the transformation of a marginalised community into a recognised force for environmental change.


In my next article, I will share more such success stories that demonstrate how inclusion and supportive public policy can improve both waste management outcomes and the lives of those who make them possible. Till then, have a great weekend!


(The writer is an environmentalist. Views personal.)

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