6 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jul 27, 2026 03:04 PM IST
Questioning Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over his demands regarding the NEET paper leak recently, Union minister J P Nadda said why he didn’t talk about, for example, the irregularities in examinations conducted in 2022 by the Service Selection Board (SSB) in Jammu and Kashmir, where the Congress is a partner of the ruling National Conference.
J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was quick to shoot back, saying that while the SSB examinations had indeed seen disruptions, the Union Territory was under President’s Rule at the time. Thanking Nadda for reminding everyone about the episode, Abdullah added: “We have no idea what happened to the High Level Committee (which probed it) or its report.”
It was the Jammu and Kashmir High Court that had ordered a High Level Committee to probe the matter, but this order was stayed by a Division Bench and a Review Committee set up by the Union Home Ministry, mainly to look into the selection of an allegedly tainted company to conduct the exams. Sources said the report flagged several anomalies in the tendering process.
Following the submission of the report by the Review Committee, the J&K High Court directed that its recommendations be implemented. However, that did not happen.
The three examinations in question had been conducted in offline mode by a Delhi-based company for the SSB for the posts of sub-inspectors in J&K Police, account assistants in the Finance Department, and junior engineers, civil, in the Jal Shakti Department, between March and July August 2022.
While over 1.13 lakh candidates appeared for the 1,200 S-I posts, there were nearly 2 lakh candidates for the 972 account assistant posts, and 20,868 for the 163 junior engineer posts.
However, as soon as the exams got over, there were complaints of irregularities, including the selection of an inordinate number of candidates from one particular division. Subsequently, the J&K administration cancelled the exams.
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Later, a company named Aptech Limited was selected via tendering for holding the examinations in the CBT (Computer Based Test) mode. This time, petitions were filed in the High Court alleging irregularities in the tendering process, and that Aptech had faced allegations of malpractices in the past too.
On December 8, 2022, Justice Wasim Sadiq Nargal of the J&K High Court directed the constitution of a high-level committee headed by a retired High Court judge to probe “brazen irregularities / illegalities” in changing of the tender conditions. The SSB’s functioning did not inspire confidence, the judge said.
However, the next day, this order was stayed by a Division Bench.
Later that month, the exams for police and junior engineer posts were conducted, by Aptech Ltd. (Those for account assistants were only held in January 2024.)
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Meanwhile, as affected candidates continued to protest, on April 3, 2023, the Union Home Ministry directed the J&K administration to set up a Review Committee to look at the case. This panel was formally formed on April 22, 2023, headed by then Additional Chief Secretary Rajkumar Goel (now Chief Information Commissioner) and including IAS officers Sanjeev Verma and Dr Raghav Langer.
The committee’s mandate was to “examine the work processes and the institutional set-up in the Board and see whether the latter is designed to deliver on the Board’s core mandate” and to “examine whether the process of tendering followed by J&K SSB… was consistent with extant Financial Rules / Acts and, if all the relevant norms were fully complied with”.
According to government sources, the Review Committee found key anomalies in the tender awarded to Aptech Ltd. First, the firm was required to submit an affidavit that it was not involved in any ongoing investigation by any agency, but it qualified this with the rider “to the best of my knowledge”. Second, the Purchase Committee relaxed eligibility and other conditions, affecting competitive bidding. The panel reportedly also found violation of tender conditions under Section-16, which should have led to termination of the contract. Fourth, the minimum average annual turnover of the firm to be selected was lowered from Rs 20 crore to Rs 10 crore, without any objective basis or mention of the estimated project cost. Sources said the logic was that this would “increase competition”.
On August 31, 2023, in an order in the case, Justice Moksha Khajuria Kazmi of the High Court said that the J&K administration will take a decision “on the basis of the report / recommendations made by the Review Committee within a period of ten days”. On September 25, 2023, the Law Department of the UT gave its opinion on the Review Committee report and referred to the clauses for taking action.
However, its findings remained on paper.
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The results for the three exams were declared in phases between November 2023 and February 2024.
Asked about the issue, an official of Aptech Ltd said: “That matter is closed now.”
The then J&K Chief Secretary Arun Kumar Mehta and current Chief Secretary Atul Dullo did not respond to queries sent by The Indian Express. A senior officer privy to the developments related to the three examinations said: “The government forwarded the Review Committee report to the SSB for consideration. They are an autonomous organisation, they don’t work like a government department.”
Another source said the exams in fact improved the existing system under which a large section of government employees used to be backdoor entrants. “The government was only trying to ensure fair selection,” the source said.