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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.

Strategic Bargain

The signing of India and the European Union’s long-delayed free-trade agreement (FTA) and the formalisation of a security and defence partnership binds nearly two billion people and about a quarter of global GDP into a meaningful economic and strategic bloc. In an age of tariff wars, sanctions regimes and maritime disruption, this itself is no small feat.


While bilateral trade already exceeds $136 bn a year, the FTA promises to push it much further. But the defence partnership in this deal nudges India–EU relations beyond polite declarations towards capability-driven cooperation. This sudden affinity for India has less to do with any affection on part of the EU than about a shared sense of strategic urgency.


Europe’s post-Cold War security architecture has been shattered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. India, for its part, confronts an assertive China along a disputed Himalayan border and across the Indian Ocean. Both worry about weaponised supply chains and America under Donald Trump that looks increasingly unpredictable as a guarantor of global order. Thus, the stalled trade negotiation between the EU and India has re-emerged as a geopolitical necessity.


For decades Europe mattered to India strategically mainly through France. Now the relationship is broadening, driven by hard-headedness on both sides. Europe has advanced military technology but struggles to scale its production. India offers manufacturing capacity, a skilled workforce and a political push for indigenisation. Joint work on artillery, naval platforms, sensors and ammunition serves both Europe’s need to replenish depleted stockpiles and India’s desire to escape dependence on legacy suppliers.


Maritime security is the most visible point of convergence. European trade and energy flows depend heavily on the Indian Ocean, where piracy, coercion and instability from the Red Sea to the western reaches have become harder to ignore. India’s naval reach and its information-fusion hub for the region make it an attractive partner. The cooperation is deliberately non-confrontational, reflecting India’s insistence on strategic autonomy.


Emerging technologies, space security and cyber resilience offer potentially deeper gains. Here, co-development and dual-use innovation allow both sides to sidestep the sensitivities of outright technology transfer. Lessons from Ukraine about drones, cyber-attacks and disinformation have sharpened European interest about technology in warfare and India brings software expertise and operational experience to the table.


But for all this convergence, the partnership remains brittle. Europe sees Russia as an existential threat while India still treats it as a key defence supplier and energy partner. Brussels continues to engage Pakistan through trade preferences that Delhi views with suspicion, and continues to trade heavily with China despite India’s concerns. European lectures on human rights and environmental standards grate against India’s development-first instincts.


The result is a strategically cautious relationship. The FTA will likely strengthen supply-chain resilience and indirectly bolster security. If pursued pragmatically, the defence pact can enhance capabilities without forcing alignment. But absent greater convergence on Russia, China and regional priorities, this will remain a partnership of convenience rather than conviction.

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