Act that punishes organized cheating in government exams comes into effect

Act that punishes organized cheating in government exams comes into effect

Sub: Polity

Sec: Legislation in news

Context:

• The Union Government has notified that the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 will come into operation with effect from June 21.

More on news:

• The University Grants Commission-National Eligibility Test 2024 (UGC-NET) examination that was canceled on June 19 on grounds of being compromised and is being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation will however not be covered by the newly enacted law.

About Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024:

• The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Bill, 2024 that has provision for up to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to ₹1 crore for malpractices and organized cheating in government recruitment exams was notified by the Union government to come into effect from June 21.

List of offenses:

• The Act mentions punishments for

• leakage of question paper or answer key,
• directly or indirectly assisting the candidate in any manner unauthorisedly in the public examination,
• tampering with the computer network or a computer resource or a computer system

as offenses done by a person, group of persons or institutions.

• Besides these, creation of fake website to cheat or for monetary gain, conduct of fake examination, issuance of fake admit cards or offer letters to cheat or for monetary gain and manipulation in seating arrangements, allocation of dates and shifts for the candidates to facilitate adopting unfair means in examinations are also among the offenses punishable under the law.
• Unfair means, as per the Act includes: 
  • unauthorized access or leakage of question paper or answer key, 
  • assisting a candidate during a public examination, 
  • tampering with computer network or resources, 
  • tampering with documents for shortlisting or finalizing of merit list or rank, and 
  • conducting fake examinations, issuing fake admit cards or offering letters to cheat, for monetary gain.
• Any person or persons resorting to unfair means and offenses under this Act shall be punished with imprisonment for a term not less than three years but which may extend to five years and with fine up to ₹10 lakh.

Service provider:

• A service provider, engaged by the public examination authority for conduct of examinations, shall also be liable to be punished with imposition of a fine up to ₹1 crore and proportionate cost of examination shall also be recovered from it.
• Such service providers shall also be barred from being assigned with any responsibility for the conduct of any public examination for a period of four years.
• The Act defines service provider as any agency, organization, body, association of persons, business entity, company, partnership or single proprietorship firm, including its associates, sub-contractors and provider of support of any computer resource or any material, by whatever name it may be called, which is engaged by the public examination authority for conduct of public examination.