New Delhi: The ongoing agitation against the paper leak of the Uttarakhand Subordinate Services Selection Commission (UKSSSC) examination on September 21 has shaken Uttarakhand and the chief minister Pushkar Dhami looks besieged. The protests started after word of an alleged paper leak at a centre in Hardwar angered students appearing for the examination.

On September 25, thousands started demonstrating, with Haldwani examination aspirants calling for a hunger strike. The Times of India reported that the protests from Hardwar, soon spread to Uttarkashi, Almora, Pithoragarh, Chamoli, Karnaprayag and Haldwani.

The CM has called the agitation a “conspiracy” and an attempt to create “unrest” in the state.

He went as far as to term this a “copy-jihad”.  The state government though, has been forced to constitute a Special Investigative Team (SIT) on September 24, to explore events behind the charges and it is said, will submit its report in a month.

The Wire Hindi has reported how slogans of Paper Chor Gaddi Chhor have rent the air in Dehradun as protestors called for a CBI enquiry and strict action to preserve the integrity of examinations.

A regional leader in Uttarakhand, Bobby Panwar, 27, has emerged as the key face in the ongoing protests against a paper leak that has put the Pushkar Singh Dhami-led BJP government in the dock. The Indian Express reported that “president of the Swabhiman Morcha and the former head of the Uttarakhand Berozgar Sangh, Panwar is a familiar face in the state, rarely seen without the traditional cap he sports.” He makes a case for wanting to discover the lost ‘Uttarakhandiyat’ of the region in the tradition of the Uttarkhand Kranti Dal.

The BJP, despite shuffling CMs for a record time, has won state assembly elections consecutively and been running the government for a decade.

The paper reports that in the second such mass agitation in the capital Dehradun in the past three years, Panwar was at the heart of it. He had also contested the Lok Sabha polls in 2024 from the Tehri Garhwal seat and come third with 1.6 lakh votes, being seen as a very respectable debut.

So far, reports The Garhwal Post, the state police have arrested one Khalid Malik and his sister Sabia, who are accused of having received the leaked paper and tried to get a teacher to solve it for them, mid-exam. The Higher Education Department has suspended the teacher, Assistant Professor Suman. The Dhami government has also suspended K.N. Tiwari, Project Director of the District Rural Development Agency, whose job was to ensure that the examination does not face paper leaks.

Uttarakhand has faced repeated exam-leak scandals over the past years, starting in 2017-18. Then in 2021 and again in 2022. In 2023, the BJP government brought an anti-cheating law, but the paper leaks have not been plugged.

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