NEW DELHI, July 29 — India’s government proposed on Tuesday longer jail terms and heftier fines for examination paper leaks, seeking to restore confidence after youth-led protests demanding education reforms rocked the country.
Under the proposed legal change submitted to parliament, the maximum prison term for those involved in paper leaks would be doubled to 10 years, while fines could exceed $1 million, and court proceedings would be fast-tracked.
The legislative push follows weeks of protests over exam paper leaks and other irregularities, which culminated in the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan last week.
The protests, spearheaded by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) movement, drew massive support from students across the country and presented a major challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
The proposed amendments reaffirm “this government’s deep commitment to safeguard the welfare of the students and the youth of this country”, senior minister Jitendra Singh told the lower house of the parliament.
The changes that will be put to vote seek to make the law “more stringent and to ensure speedy justice”, Singh said, “so that the credibility of all these exams gets enhanced and gets reinstated”.
Before adjourning the sitting until Wednesday following a heated 12-hour debate, the opposition accused the government of involvement in repeated paper leaks and failure to effectively apply the existing law to curb it.
“We refuse to let the government convert its involvement into a certificate of innocence” by passing the amendments, opposition lawmaker Abhishek Banerjee said.
Many opposition members, while not outrightly opposing the amendments, called for systemic changes instead to fix the exam system.
“Let us do something more important, let us build an examination system in which these crimes become harder to commit in the first place,” opposition Congress party lawmaker Shashi Tharoor told the parliament.
The parliament reconvened last week for its monsoon session, with the first few days repeatedly disrupted by opposition lawmakers seeking accountability over a police crackdown on the student-led protests.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ordered the release of all detained protesters who are under the age of 18 and have no prior criminal record.
The CJP said the court’s interim order still allows authorities to proceed with cases and investigations against some protesters.
This “stands in direct contradiction to the solemn assurance and guarantee extended by the Government of India to the youth of this nation”, the group said in a statement.
The CJP warned that it “will have no option but to resume its nationwide protest” if the government failed to uphold its commitment not to try anyone over the protests.
Examination paper leaks have long plagued India’s highly competitive education system.
The intense pressure to succeed has fuelled a vast network of coaching centres and created opportunities for criminal groups to profit by selling leaked exam questions.
Despite repeated government crackdowns, such leaks have remained a recurring problem in both national and state-level examinations.
Demonstrations in New Delhi turned violent on July 20 when huge crowds attempted to march towards parliament from the Jantar Mantar protest site.
Police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse the protest, triggering clashes and a wave of detentions. — AFP
