Imphal, July 10: Threatening with police action and FIRs, a large number of candidates who are to appear for the written test for admission to Bachelor of Education (B Ed) course from the DM College of Teacher Education Imphal were briefly detained inside the campus by an employee of the college. The incident happened when about three hundred candidates coming to sit for the test started breaking the padlock of the office of the principal on learning that the test was earlier scheduled for today was preponed to July 9. The agitated students shouted demands for re-examination and condemned the conduct of college authority. According to Amar Sheik, a 21 year old candidate from Yairipok, the admit cards issued on July 3 has the date of examination printed as July 10 while cards issued on July has the original print struck out and replaced with July 9 as the date of examination. Interestingly, the notice for preponement of the written test was published in only a single local Manipuri paper. The candidate expressed suspicion of the concern officials colluding with a few unscrupulous elements to provide opportunity for selection to a selected few. Another candidate from Saikhul stated that there is no circulation of Manipuri newspaper in the hill regions of the state. Moreover, there was no intimation about the preponement either through e-mail or by telephone, the details of which are provided in the application form for the test. A team of City Police tried to pacify the agitated crowd, and emboldened by the police presence, an employee of the college started threatening the agitating students. An impromptu sit-in-protest was also organized at the campus. Meanwhile, Th Ibetombi Devi, Principal of the College was not available for comment which could have shed some light to the whole unfortunate incident. The total intake of candidates for the course is to be 1353. According to the notice, the reason for the preponement was the scheduling of NET examination on July 10, the same date fixed for the B Ed test originally.
