Patna : Khan Sir, Guru Rahman detained after joining Bihar civil service aspirants in protest against ‘normalisation’

Popular educators and teachers of Patna coaching centres, Faizal Khan and Motiur Rahman Khan, known as Khan Sir and Guru Rahman, were detained on Friday after they joined civil service aspirants in protests over the issue of “normalisation” in the Bihar Public Service Commission’s preliminary test.

The protesters demanded that the BPSC chairperson R B Parmar declare in a written notification that there will be no normalisation in the preliminary test, scheduled to be held on December 13. Several other protesters were also detained and police resorted to lathi charge to disperse the crowd.

Normalisation is a process aimed at addressing possible variations in the difficulty of different question papers handed out at different shifts of the same exam. The commission has considered holding the exam in two shifts, and if candidates score considerably lower marks in one shift than those in the other shift, then normalisation could be done by increasing the scores of those who got the “harder” question paper.

Protesting BPSC aspirants have opposed this, and the BPSC itself has maintained ambiguity on whether or not it would implement normalisation.

BPSC secretary Satya Prakash Sharma said the commission had not announced normalisation, and that examination would take place in a single shift. However, BPSC aspirants have demanded a written notification from the chairman of the commission in this regard.

During the protest, Khan Sir told reporters, “This is not Mathematics that can fetch uniform marks. The examination is of General Studies, where questions cannot be quantified and it would be absurd to adopt normalisation. This can deny many deserving students from cracking the prelims.”

Guru Rahman said, “We are strongly with the students and will keep protesting until the commission tells us in written that there will be no normalisation.”