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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.

‘Our agriculture is marred with multiple problems’

The annual Krishi Mahotsav hosted by Jain Irrigation systems at Jalgaon is a dynamic platform that brings agricultural research to farmers, bringing innovation to the grassroots. The impactful initiative has been instrumental in transforming farmers lives by providing them with hands-on experience of agricultural practices from soil preparation to harvest, post-harvest management, water and soil conservation, advanced drip irrigation, fertigation methods etc. Jain irrigation systems have also ventures into automation and have brought out products for smart agriculture techniques, seedling production, planting processes, and futuristic farming concepts also. In an interaction with Abhijit Mulye, the Political Editor of ‘The Perfect Voice’, Ashok Jain, Chairman of the Jain Irrigation Syatems Ltd., discusses various aspects of this unique initiative. Excerpts…


What are the top three “next-gen” technologies you have introduced recently that you believe will be the biggest game-changers for the average Indian farmer?

Jain Irrigation has consistently focused on improving farmers’ livelihoods and increasing their income through continuous research and innovation. Recently, we have introduced three next-generation technologies that are proving to be true game-changers for Indian farmers.


The first is Precision Farming, which enables farmers to optimise inputs such as water, fertilisers, and nutrients, ensuring higher productivity with lower costs.


The second is Climate-Smart Technology, designed to help farmers adapt to changing climatic conditions by improving resilience, reducing risks, and ensuring sustainable farming practices.


The third major advancement is the integration of Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor-based technologies, which allows real-time monitoring of soil moisture, crop health, and field conditions.


In addition, Jain Irrigation is effectively using an integrated system of sensors and satellite technology. To support this, the company has developed its own cloud-based platform, through which satellite-driven insights are delivered directly to farmers. This approach brings advanced space and digital technologies to the grassroots level, empowering farmers with timely, data-driven decisions and making agriculture more efficient, profitable, and sustainable.


Are we approaching a time when an Indian farmer can manage their entire irrigation and fertigation schedule via a smartphone?

Certainly yes. We have devised such systems that would help farmers not just plan but also execute their irrigation and fertigation scheduled over their smart phones. That too remotely. The farmers won’t have to be there at their fields to monitor the irrigation and fertigation schedules. In fact, this is the technology that we have displayed here at the Jain Irrigation Systems headquarters at Jalgaon. Thousands of farmers from across India visit this place every year. They can check every aspect of the systems here. We also organise their factory visits. That enhances their trust in the technology.


In your view where does Indian agriculture stand when compared to the global trends?

Our agriculture is marred with multiple problems from irrigation to productivity. But, in my opinion, they all are generated from or related to fragmentation and issues related to ownership. When farms are smaller in size, deployment of technology becomes difficult. From making arrangements regarding irrigation to everything else becomes a costly affair in a small farm. This is a peculiar issue that bothers Indian agriculture. We at Jian Irrigation Systems, have been battling this unique problem since beginning. In fact, this one issue forces us to adopt completely different path than all the other global players in the sector. The other problem is related to manpower in the fields. Fragmentation has made that also very costly for common farmers. If they somehow overcome all such problems then the last thing that hits them hard is the poor systems related to marketing and value addition of the agricultural products. To add to all these, irritable climatic conditions has now added to the woos of the farmers. In that sense we are way behind the farmers world over.


With groundwater levels depleting rapidly, what specific technological interventions have you developed for water-stressed regions like Marathwada or Vidarbha?

Farmers and agriculture are the foremost things throughout the world. They are unmatched and hence enhancing their lives has been our moto since beginning. As I said earlier, most of our technological interventions have been developed to suit the Indian conditions. Our slogans like ‘more crop per drop’ too are directed towards it. We started off with piping systems, then as the logical progression we expanded into drip irrigation and that division has produced several technological interventions that would be helpful for farmers in water-stressed areas. Apart from the irrigation, we have been into agri-inputs such as tissue-culture plants, saplings etc. and even in the sector of hydroponics and solar systems.


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